19 Quick Creative Tips for SUPERSTITIAL(R) Ads

Is your art department or agency creating their first SUPERSTITIAL? We asked the folks at Unicast who invented and own) the technology behind SUPERSTITIALs to give us some useful tips when it comes to creating your ad.

Three Don'ts:

1. Don't try to cram production into super-quick Internet time. You are making the equivalent of a commercial, not an ad banner

2. Don't fill every inch of the space with things. A simple clean presentation works best.

3. Avoid using web-like interface elements. You're not trying to lull the audience with familiarity. These ads catch the eye because they are exciting and different!

10 Specific Graphic Art Considerations:

1. Don't try to emulate photographic quality images; using JPEG files will slow things down and will not take full advantage of Flash's graphics engine.

2. Allow for larger scaled vector shapes and text to move throughout the whole spaceSize considerations for Flash animations (How to keep it small!)

3. Always use symbols to animate.

4. Do not convert fonts to art and use as FEW fonts as possible.

5. NO gradients for animations. Use gradients for buttons and still objects. Choose a few colors and use them consistently.

6. Optimize all shapes

7. You can vary the format & compression level of different graphics, based on their complexity (i.e.- .JPG or .GIF, each at varying compression levels).

8. Edit and resize all images before you import them into Flash.

9. Edit all shapes, cleaning up extra lines and breaks.

10. Tweened animations take less memory than frame-by-frame animations.

6 Tips for Working with Audio

1. Balance audio quality & compression with file size, to keep the SUPERSTITIAL as far under your 100K limit as possible.

2. Prepare separate tracks for music, sound effects, and voiceovers.

3. Compress voiceovers less, to achieve better quality of the speaker's voice.

4. Compress sound effects a bit more as they do not need to be the highest quality.

5. Flash 4 supports MP3 audio compression.

6. Avoid using overly loud music or sound as many sites and networks will not accept this due to user pushback.

Want more suggestions on creative execution and technical requirements? You can contact Unicast at: creative@unicast.com