The antidote to iStock: Your iPhone.

Nothing can bog down your blog post more than a boring, predictable visual. (Hello iStock.) So what is a blogger to do? Well, look no further than your iPhone. There are some amazing apps that make creating a visual fun and easy. Here are a few of my favorites. Over Over adds text to photos. You can select fonts, alignment, size and color all within the app. (No more layers in Photoshop.) annemccoll_copywriter

Take a picture. That's right. Don't be shy. Draw on notepad, a white board and post. anne_mccoll_content

Vine Vine is a new six-second video app.And it makes making stop motion animation easy! How could you use it? Pin up your products one by one?

Creativ-Tea: How to Brew Fresh Ideas

I gave a short presentation at the Hera Hub Writers Lounge on generating ideas. Really it was an exercise in trying out the new Haiku Deck app, which lets non-designers make cool Power Point presentations. Then I took the slides and turned them into a video. Yes, all copy AND design by a freelance copywriter. If I can do it, so can you. You can see both below.

The new year unfolds with Instagram Cranes.

MP_craneAs an interactive copywriter, the expected holiday greeting is to send a witty, holiday themed email or video. But this year, I wanted to do something different, something precious. Something that people would keep out on their desks year round.

After several creative meanderings (most of which involved large amounts of chocolate,) I came up with Instagram origami cranes. (The crane is a symbol of prosperity and luck.) It's the ideal collision of digital and real world.  For my social media and marketing clients that I followed on Instagram, I designed customized square grids using their Instagram photos and then printed it on my HP printer.  I cut each square to size and then folded a crane. I attached a ribbon with a gift tag: "May the New Year unfold with peace and joy." Clients could hang their Instagram cranes on a tree or in their office.

The response was quite positive.

HM_crane SB_crane

KB_crane

KE_crane

MG_crane

A Year of Procrastination: Day 1

A copywriter procrastinates What's my creative project for the year? Simply to document my creative procrastination. (Let's just call it creative crosstraining – sketchnotes, illustrations, photos, and the occasional fold.) As an interactive copywriter, sometimes I do everything but write. So this is a formal documentation of those creative meanderings. But often, I find the answer I am looking for in my doodles rather than within the linear thought patterns of writing.

Can you accomplish a lot in 5 or 15 minutes? Not always. But after 365 days, there's quite a body of work.

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. – Jessica Hische

Sketchnotes from Interactive Day San Diego

Well, Interactive Day San Diego keeps growing with over 800 people attending this year. In my continuing exploration of how to blog an event without writing, I did more sketchnotes.

I attended two session on mobile marketing that dovetailed nicely with each other.

______________________________

Then after lunch it was more creative territory. Yay! ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ Of course, by happy hour I was no longer sketching.

What Luke Skywalker taught me about the big idea.

This spring Star War Episode 1:  The Phantom Menace was back on the silver screen in 3-D. So after watching Phantom Menace, I ended up watching Episode 4: A New Home within the same week. Comparing the plotlines of the two movies got me thinking about the importance of the big idea when telling a story. (Whether you should begin with the prequels or original triology is a whole other blog post.)

The original Star Wars, A New Hope, is a classic story of good vs evil. We follow the quest of young Luke as he grows as a young man.  The end of the movie is an adrenaline rush as we watch Luke and the other pilots make the assault on the Death Star and blow it up.

Contrast this with the ending of Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. Who are we rooting for? Well to start with we have the froggish Jar Jar Binks leading the Gungans into battle against the Trade Federation battle droids.

Then we have Princess Amidala  leading the capture of the palace.

Dames with guns are hot. Espcecially in Episode 2 when they wear ripped white spandex jumpsuits.

Anakin ends up in the sky and blows up the control ship thus disabling all the droids.

And finally, Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi  battle Darth Maul.

Did you get that? Now imagine if this was a marketing campaign. With A New Hope, you can name who the hero is – Luke Skywalker.

Now quick, who's the hero of the Phantom Menace?

If you stuff too many details in your messaging people end up remembering nothing.

Live long and prosper.

May the Force be with you.