Multimedia – An Important Career Option

In our today’s blog, we will be discussing Multimedia and how is it an important career option.

A multimedia is a form of a content type for human communication through computer vision.

It is used to visualize and understand information from one to another. Multimedia is the way of communicating through text, graphics, audio, and video.

The most important element of Multimedia is the computer, without a computer, the coordination with visuals and audio can’t be possible.

Multimedia is a part of the Animation field.

The Animation & Multimedia industry has matured in India and has moved on from being just an outsourcing facility to a creator of indigenous intellectual property as well.

There are more than 300 Animation studios that came up about three to four years back only.

Multimedia is required in every field nowadays, whether it be an online presentation or a business conference.

Multimedia plays the most vital role in advertising.

It required in print as well as electronic media.

Firstly, they are prepared in computers using software and then it is shown to the ultimate audience.

Multimedia is used in print media like journals, magazines, newspaper etc.

Nowadays, we not only see text but photographs too in newspapers. Multimedia is also used in the field of education.

In the last ten years, we have seen a vast growth in the usage of computers in schools.

Computers make studies more interesting.

There are different visuals and pictures used to incorporate the study matter in a child’s mind.

It is scientifically proven that it is easier to understand something when we see it visually.

In many companies, presenting information to business professionals is a required form of communication.

Applications are already available for creating great-looking presentations, and through multimedia, these applications will become even better and more effective.

There is a vast scope of career options in the field of multimedia.

MAAC KOLKATA offers such courses which help you to master multimedia and it makes you ready to take up multimedia in any required field.

Multimedia is present everywhere, the phones we use, the T.V. we watch, the newspaper we read, the games we play.

Multimedia is required everywhere. The games in our mobile phones also contain multimedia.

There are different career options related to multimedia, some of them are:

Advertising manager, Creative Director, Media director, Web Designer/Developer, Multimedia Designer, Animator, Game Programmer , Game Tester, Photographer.

 Lately, there were no such scholastic courses in multimedia but nowadays many big colleges in the country offer degree courses in multimedia.

There are courses like a Diploma course, Bachelors Degree in Multimedia etc. Many software companies are offering for many types of software.

These professionals are also recruited in film companies, schools, universities, business companies etc.

Multimedia professionals generally work on creating digital images for the purpose of Animation, creating digital images for the purpose of Animation.

Multimedia can be pursued with any stream. A commerce student can also opt for this in college as well as the students of other streams.

The Multimedia specialists design and create information technology based multimedia products such as websites, DVDs as well.

Some key skills that are most importantly required to be in multimedia professional are:

A good eye for Design, Layout, and detail imagination and Creativity, Time management skills, Organizational skills.

The companies/agencies that employ professionals as:

Advertising agencies

Local authorities

Retailers

Software/multimedia houses

IT consultancies

Computer games companies

Manufacturers

Publishers

Educational Organisations

The average pay for a these professional in this country, India is about 3,90,000 per year.

There are not that much of a promotion scheme when it comes to Multimedia, that is why people are generally not promoted to other designations but they do get the bonus.

This is very valid too, as when it comes to multimedia, it becomes very different from other jobs.

Multimedia is maybe the only field and the only job that requires creativity, unlike the other jobs.

Once your creative power is lost (which happens very rarely with creative people) you cannot do anything, not even a promotion or an extra pay can help you save your livelihood.

Usually, the salary in this field  depends upon the skill and knowledge of the respective person.

The contract can be temporary like a one or two month’s contract. It can also be a contract that requires only the fulfillment of only one project.

For example, there are companies that hire professionals to work on their product design and once the product design is done, the work and the interest of the company in the professionals are also over.

It is very useful and advantageous for multimedia professionals as they can work with different companies at the same time.

It is also useful for the young and budding media students who wish to gain experience as they can work with some small startup companies on a temporary basis.

It is a very good Career option and also good way to have some extra earnings and part time jobs for people who are more interested in some other field than Multimedia.

After gaining experience in this field one can start up his or her own Business and work independently.

Maac Kolkata is one of oldest and renowned Academy in India for providing training in Animation, Vfx and multimedia.

MAAC Kolkata provides a comprehensive, 360 degree learning opportunity for extensive job-oriented training in responsive web design, 2D Animation & print.

You will be introduced to the latest trends in the web & publishing industry like digital publication, augmented reality, mobile apps & interactive web content.

So it is a great career option for young aspirants who aspire to be successful and keep their creative mind alive at the same time.

People who do not wish to get a job and work 9 hours a day and feel like robots, multimedia is the perfect option for such people.

PICTURES AND WORDS: VISUAL STORYTELLING AS A MULTIMEDIA TREND

In our blog we will discuss the visual storytelling as a multimedia trend.

Human beings have been fascinated by the idea of stories being represented in a visual form since time immemorial.

Any and every history book attests to this fact, telling us about people from prehistoric times recording their lives and stories in the form of cave paintings, of ancient Egyptians with their pictograms (hieroglyphs).

Papyrus scrolls, or Europe with the vast number of art pieces inspired by oral and written storytelling traditions, or even sculptures and carvings in temples or stained glass window paintings in churches.

These visual depictions of stories have endured through the years, and to this day there are people who study them to try and understand the story behind the art.

Despite being rooted in the fine arts, this trend has evolved in the past few centuries into more obvious formats such as the motion picture, while traditional hand drawings on paper or canvas have transitioned onto their digital counterparts in the field of multimedia.

Before we delve into the digital world, however, let us understand what visual storytelling is.

As noted earlier, visual storytelling is the representation of a story or narrative through some form of visual media and multimedia.

Also known as narrative storytelling or a photo story, it ignites imagination, inspires emotion and encourages the development of aspirations in the viewer.

While the concept has existed for centuries, the term is relatively new and has gained traction in the past decade or so with the advent of digital and new media.

Visual storytelling often includes a series of images or a video in order to portray the core message.

In today’s context, visual storytelling is a term most commonly found in the marketing and communications world.

Can be described as a marketing strategy that communicates powerful ideas in an interactive and immersive manner by means of a compelling story arc that will appeal to the potential customer.

The key points here are interactivity and customer (or consumer) immersion, and an underlying narrative to the presentation that enforces the central idea behind the product or service.

The main goal of visual storytelling today is to create profitable customer engagement for the marketer. The reasons for this are manifold:

Population boom, leading to demand for more content.
Dramatic increase in content production, as a result.
Decrease in human attention span, due the increase in engaging content.
Faster processing of visual image-based input in the human brain; research shows that images are processed several thousand times faster than      text.
Information presented in the form of a story is more appealing to the human mind.

People today are more interested in experiences, rather than simply products or services.

Take a moment and think of your smart phone.

It’s the easiest example of a product that gives you an experience: from communicating with family, friends, or colleagues, playing that latest game, surfing the internet.

Keeping up with the news, watching films and television shows, taking photographs, navigating the roads and exploring new places.

All of it is possible on that pocket-sized device.

So that urge you feel to change your smart phone when a newer, more ‘feature-rich’ model is released is because of that driving quest that we post-modern humans have for new and pleasurable experiences.

Another good example is VR gaming.

Virtual reality allows the user to step into a different world, so to speak, by ‘changing’ their surroundings into whatever is being projected into the headset view.

Game developers have taken this to the next level by integrating motion capture technology into game controllers, allowing the player to experience the game as though they are a part of the environment.

To better understand how it works, you can read our recent article on VR kits.

For the marketer, all of this means that the challenge lies in creating content across all multimedia platforms (digital, as well as print and broadcast) that will engage and satisfy the needs of the potential customer.

Companies today are shifting more aggressively to audience-oriented policies of action.

Since the thirst for an impactful story has remained ingrained in our nature for thousands of years that is the road to take.

In addition to simply telling a story, including elements of social change and positive environmental influence create vulnerability and highlight the humane side of a business, which boosts the image of the marketer to a great degree by inspiring trust and empathy in the audience.

For successfully telling a visual story, it is absolutely necessary that proper planning is undertaken.

From the message that needs to be delivered to the viewer, to the presentation of the content, every step needs to be planned properly keeping in mind the goals of both the medium and the marketer.

Inspire emotion and invoke trust in order to create a connection, and then cater to the audience’s needs through the product or service being marketed.

The internet serves as the most prolific platform for information exchange in the world today.

As a result, marketers are experiencing the need to keep up with the flow and transition to the digital world.

Most of the multimedia like print media, electronic, educational institutes, hospitals and other product and service providers has a digital presence in addition to their physical one.

A lot of businesses operate almost entirely on digital platforms, and many are devoted to establishing digital presences for others.

This global transition to the digital space in the past few decades has created a need for different forms of digital content, also known as multimedia.

This includes text-based communication, audio-based media such as music and radio broadcasts, as well as visual media like photographs, advertisements, motion pictures and video and virtual reality.

The global community thrives on such content on a daily basis, and the very nature of visual media ensures that it will have an effect on people across all sorts of cultures and through time and generations.

For more information on multimedia and how you can use it for visual storytelling, do check out Maac Kolkata’s comprehensive courses covering graphic and web design, multimedia trends and more.

The Power Of Print Media

In our today’s blog we will discuss the power of print media.

The world is facilitated by information exchange.

Be it in the form of news, opinions and gossip, interviews, film and television shows, books or any other medium, this sort of knowledge interchange is what enriches, and provides direction and structure to our life.

Media determines our actions to a large extent, and often we become sources of information as well.

This sort of proliferation of media is the basic root of advertisement, which is the promotion or publicizing of a product, service or event.

Branding is a crucial aspect as well, because if one does not have a distinguishable name, they have no way to stand out in the media pool.

While society as a whole is going digital, the most trusted form of media still remains print media. By print media, we mean physical, tangible sources of information such as newspapers, magazines and leaflets.

While digital advertising and media promotion is becoming quite popular, let us focus on the classic mode of print media advertisement.

Print media advertising uses such physically printed forms of media in order to reach consumers, businesses, customers and other prospective audiences.

There are several different types of print media that brands can use to promote themselves:

Periodicals: These refer to newspapers and magazines. There are over 1 lakh periodicals registered with the government of India as of 2015.

Most of them are in the Hindi language (around 39,000) and English (around 13,000). Advertisers can choose from a large selection of newspaper formats, such as local, regional or national titles published daily, in the evenings, weekly, or even Sunday editions.

Newspapers target different readerships with a mix of various categories of content like sports, entertainment, business, fashion, politics, and/or opinion pieces, in addition to local, national and international news.

Magazines are in a book format and offer advertisers extensive choices of readership and frequency of publication.

These typically cover a wide range of interests, like sport, hobbies, fashion, health, current affairs (such as trade and commerce, business, etc.) and local topics.

Advertisers can buy different sizes of advertising space, from small classifieds ads which have only text, to larger ads that can include text, photographs, illustrations and graphics in sizes that range up to a full page or even a double-page spread.

Major papers by circulation include Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Ananda Bazar Patrika.

India Today, Economic Times, Champak, Anandamela, Femina, Reader’s Digest and Sarita are among the most popular magazines.

Billboards and Posters: If you live in the city, chances are that you see at least five billboards every day.

If you don’t know what billboards are, they are what we commonly call hoardings.

These and posters are put up on various street corners and feature advertisements about different products, services or events.

They are the easiest method to reach a huge and varied audience.

In fact, there are so many billboards in our country that movements have started in several cities to motivate the authorities to regulate them and prevent defacing of public property.

Sometimes, instead of pasting posters on walls or lamp posts, pamphlets and flyers are handed out to pedestrians.

Direct Mail or Post: Some advertisers use the postal system to spread their sales message.

In this kind of print media, printed content is posted directly to the consumer’s home.

These advertisers usually have a mailing list of people who will be sent their media. Magazines like Reader’s Digest India use this system to promote their secondary publications and sweepstakes events, which are also tactics to turn the casual reader into a subscriber.

Door To Door Drop: Have you ever found an advertisement pamphlet tucked away in the morning paper or with the other letters in your postbox? That is the door to door drop system.

Catalogues: A catalogue is a type of magazine that contains a list of products or services.

They are typically used by stores to provide customers with a comprehensive collection of their available products and inspire them to make purchases, and are even found in planes for passengers to browse and order on the go.

Now that we have an idea of the different types of print media, let us look at the plus points of print media advertising.

Print Media is a sensory medium, unlike its digital counterpart.

While moving content to the internet has drastically improved the reach of advertising, the virtual world does not offer tangibility.

Feeling paper in one’s hands makes the advertisement seem more real, and establishes its existence in the physical world.

It’s not just touch: printed paper triggers more senses than seeing something on a screen, and therefore has a stronger impact on the reader.

Research has shown that engaging more than three senses can increase the effectiveness of an advertisement by upto 70%!

Further, print offers less distraction than the internet which leads to longer durations of engagement with a particular content.

This means that content leaves a more profound effect on the reader.

Print is also extremely flexible, as different categories of information can be targeted to specific audiences through different formats, as we saw in the types of print media.

These days, a lot of these print media advertisements are being converted to a digital format.

News providers, periodicals, and other advertisers are expanding to an internet presence in order to reach a wider audience and make current content available at all times.

They include advertisements for their content on other websites as well by purchasing what is known as ‘digital real estate’, or ad-space.

Event traditional print media ads include QR codes linking to the advertiser’s digital presence and bridging the gap between print and virtual.

This digital content is accessible across mobile as well as desktop platforms, increasing the capability of the media.

At MAAC Kolkata, you can harness the power of this fast-growing world through courses tailored to teach you about graphic and web design, branding and advertising and give you a head start for your advertising career and print media industry.