iBelieve Night - Monday, May 4

iBelieve is a community campaign that aims to celebrate Greater Des Moines, its opportunities and the people whose conviction and spirit continually pushes this community toward greater success (even in tough times).

As one of the founding partners of the iBelieve campaign (along with the Greater Des Moines Partnership) we would like to encourage everyone to attend the campaign's kick-off rally next week. There will be a short program, drinks, live entertainment and the first 1,000 receive free tickets to the I-Cubs game.

Principal Park
Monday, May 4
4:30 - 6:30 pm

~Heather

New "Special Effects Demo Montage"

Many of us at Applied Art & Technology are engaged in creating a new demo DVD. Once finished, this DVD will include our best work from our production, post production, and graphics departments.

As a special treat to you blog subscribers, you get to see the “Special Effects Demo Montage” as a small sample of the great stuff that will be on our new Demo DVD.

I edited this two minute piece in our DS edit suite. Several of the projects featured in the montage are broken down to reveal the various layers we created to accomplish the effects. It was a time consuming labor of love to restore the projects and separate the layers in order to edit them into this piece, and everyone in post and graphics had a part in the process.

Here is your preview of our new “Special Effects Demo Montage”!



~Chris

Does Your Site Work?

All business owners should ask this question not just once, but often - Am I receiving the maximum return on my investment from my website?

It's an easy to question to ask, but a difficult one to measure. Therefore, we've put together a site that gets you thinking and testing with...

• a few general questions about your site (asking about goal conversion rates, usability and A/B testing, social media strategy, etc.)
• a presentation detailing easy free tips and useful information on how you can and why you should test your site - click [Free Stuff]
• the opportunity to receive a free site analysis

~Steph

LED Display Comparison

I just returned from another tradeshow in Las Vegas, Exhibitor2009, where we had an opportunity to partner with AV Dimensions to display our content on two LED displays side-by-side. We provided content to show in their exhibit on both a Barco 4mm Black LED display (NX-4) and the more common 8mm (ILite 8 MD) display. The LED displays are becoming more and more prevalent – at sporting events, corporate functions, concerts, and of course trade shows.

Their advantages are that they are extremely bright and can be viewed in direct sunlight, are very thin, and can be configured in nearly any size. This was my first opportunity to work with the NX-4 and my impression was “WOW – That looks stunning.” The contrast was much greater, the black levels were incredible, the brightness was higher, not to mention the much higher resolution. Both displays drew a lot of attention, but the NX-4 was the overwhelming favorite. We provided a custom edited video for both displays to show off the advantages of each system. For the ILite 8 we customized an animation loop and for the NX-4 we edited both live action and animation in HD.

If you have questions about LED displays, other display technologies or how to grab the audiences' attention at your next tradeshow or event contact me at info@appliedart.com.

Geek Speak: The 4mm or 8mm designation of LED displays refers to the “pixel pitch” or physical distance between the LEDs. The smaller the number the better. Pixel pitch affects viewability when viewing the displays up close because the eye does not blend the pixels together and spaces between them can be discerned.

Booth
8mm LED4mm LED

~Mark