Tag: design

Some video work today

Carl Setzer

I spent some time this morning trimming this video out of Trinity’s service last Sunday. A local choir, the Evergreen Ensemble, performed with us; their music was stunning. As I was watching (I was running media that service), I thought “I want to pull this out and post it on our socials”. So, I whipped open Premier Pro and made this little piece to share (posted on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).

I am always pleased when I get to create fun projects, even small ones like this. Though I’m no master of Adobe stuff, I enjoy getting in with this stuff. For a bit of creative diversity I used Canva to create the thumbnail. I’ve come to deeply appreciate Canva’s simplicity. It makes creating something like this fast and clean.

I do love creating content and managing websites and social media. I find this work delightful and fulfilling. I guess I should find ways to get more of this in my life.

Some experiments with AI

Carl Setzer2 Comments
bionic hand and human hand finger pointing

Every time I turn around, there’s a new AI tool. Canva (something of a favorite of mine) recently launched its own AI tool, “Magic Design“. I thought it would be fun to experiment with a quip I thought up this morning.

Having a plan is the most effective way to avoid being swayed by the guile of marketing

So, let’s plug this in and see what comes of it, shall we? To be clear, the text above was the only thing I plugged into the prompt. (I’m using my personal version of Canva, which is the free one, so there are watermarks)

Item 1:

The first thing it came up with is a video, with a focus on planning. Kinda nice, methinks.

Item 2:

This one is a Facebook cover, with a similar motif to the first item. Again, nice.

Item 3:

Another image, this one oriented towards mobile/portrait mode.

One additional item:

Last week, I edited out the postlude from our Sunday service and created its own video on our YouTube channel (check it out here if you’re so inclined). I was feeling a bit pressed for time, so I opted for Magic Design and really liked what it zipped out. I just needed to make a few tweaks and I had something quite usable.

I like what I see so far. With more guidance, I’m confident it would give results better suited for specific needs. What do you think? Are designers going to be impacted by this technology? Or will it simply be incorporated to streamline work flow?

Some Photoshop Work

Carl Setzer

This week I needed to create a basic image based on a quote for a presentation. The team selected this one:

We can choose courage, or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.

Brené Brown 

I like and admire Brene Brown, so I this made me happy. Now, I have tons of options (ie: Canva and Adobe Express). I opted, in the end, for Photoshop. I haven’t used it in a few weeks, so this was a good way to keep my skills…it not “sharp”, at least “unrusty”. It took only a few minutes to whip this one up:

Then I thought “you know, it would be cool to post this to Instagram”. Always a good thing to make sure people know what I can do, right? Anyway, an Instagram post is square. As you might have noticed, this above is not. A benefit of doing this kind of work in Canva is their “Resize” tool (it is a Premium feature). Though not perfect, it does a create job of guesstimating. Tweaking the image then is pretty easy. Photoshop doesn’t have a slick little tool like that. Changing the canvas size is pretty straightforward, though. Then one needs to do a bit more tweaking than what would be needed with Canva’s tool. Re-sizing the image and text, mostly. And making sure you remember all the elements that are hidden by the new canvas size.

This was clear cut, so it was pretty easy to readjust the elements and create an Instagram styled image.

Yeah, I enjoy these sorts of projects, so it was fun.

An Animated Haiku

Carl Setzer2 Comments

Today’s haiku video was created with Canva, a powerful freemium design tool. If you’re not familiar with it, I highly recommend it. The free version has plenty of functionality, and the premium versions are amazing without the high costs of Adobe.

Some Design Work

Carl Setzer

I spent the day editing a video for distribution on social channels. I do love that kind of work. This image is one of the thumbnails I created on Canva. It boggles my mind how quickly I can create something like this. I have many memories of using Photoshop for such things. I love living in the future!