Using a lot of graphics or not?

[Shane Ross]

I am doing more graphics that I did when I was on an Avid. FCP can do more graphics than an Avid can, and my clients are beginning to realize that. OR…stuff that I would send off to a graphics guy to handle I am doing more and more myself.

And the clients are tending to want more interesting stuff to “wow” people.

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Debe]

Depends on the client.

I have one client that wants every dang thing to look like CNN. Graphics everywhere. We’ve taken to calling it “text-apalooza”

I have another client that is rebelling against that. Sometimes he doesn’t even want name supers. It’s a still title graphic at the head and that’s it sometimes.

He doesn’t think the story is better told through graphics, and if he can help it, he designs a product that needs no graphics, as long as the rest of the program tells the story.

And the rest, they’re somewhere in the middle…

debe

[Matt Gorney]

I’m liking the no frills approach. If I see another bullet point graphic with overcrowded, hard to read text I will scream.

[Walter Biscardi]

I think the project and the audience dictates the amount of graphics used.

A training product introducing the audience to a new method, technique or product will require more graphics than norma.

Marketing videos depend on the event and scope of the video itself. Financial institutions always seem to have a million and one graphics touting all their gains over the past year. Other marketing videos are just full of pretty pictures with emphasis on just a few graphics.

Broadcast seems to be graphics heavy on the opens, bumpers and close but with minimal graphics during the show. This is especially true of our HD work. The HD images are just so pretty nobody wants to cover them up……. yet.

Personally, I go for the minimal approach with all our projects unless the client dictates more.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Debe]

…and even worse, when the client wants you to use a badly formatted PowerPoint presentation for your graphics to save money, and then complains when it’s not legible, even though you warned him or her that PPT doesn’t necessarily translate to TV so well…

or WORSE, the client thinks it’s appropriate to let his 14 year old kid do the graphic design because “he’s so good with the computer”, and you have to deal with the wrong aspect ratio, bad spelling on files you can’t alter because he used some consumer app on a PC, and general other garbage. I once had to cut and paste letters out of a jpeg, of all things, to fix a typo. If the client wasn’t sitting behind me, I would have re-created the whole thing, but since he was right there, that would have been a political mess…

I appreciate the client who will only use graphics when it’s necessary, instead of feeling like it’s required at all times simply because you CAN do that.

debe