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In our first installment, you got a peek of sleep’s benefits to boost creativity. Check out how sleep can help you with your next successful campaign and creative!

Log Happy Hours: Sleep makes us happier people

Although not a direct creativity booster, a boost in happiness levels generally makes people more creative in that it motivates creative self-expression. And as it turns out, you needn’t look further from your pillow to find the silver bullet, or happy pill, of happiness. The effect of sleep on happiness is even greater than that of money!

In The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance, President and CEO of The Energy Project, Tony Schwartz, dedicates an entire chapter to the importance of sleep and happiness. One of the studies the book highlights, done at the University of Michigan, found that sleep had a more significant effect on a person’s state of mind than earning more money. Yet another study published in the professional journal Science supported this finding. betfinal عربي The Science study’s authors concluded, “Large increases of real income in the developed world over the past 50 years have yielded no change in reported life satisfaction. [On the other hand,] differences in reported sleep quality are associated with a very large difference in reported enjoyment.”

More than Just a Rat in a Cage: Sleep and memory

Did you know that lab mice dream about mazes? You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this? (Pun intended.) Well, it turns out that only after a good night’s sleep can lab mice actually figure out how to get around obstacles in a maze. It turns out it’s the same with people. I guess the Smashing Pumpkins were right after all…about the “rat in a cage” part. العاب وجوائز مالية حقيقية But save the angst, this is good news – sleep improves memory and learning.

Author Tony Schwartz notes that learning actually takes place during sleep. He notes, “Although the acquisition of knowledge occurs only during waking life, there is evidence that we process, consolidate and stabilize memory during sleep…[During sleep,] we appear to process and consolidate fact-based information, such as a new language or the capital of a state.”

If you don’t think memory is important in creativity, just consider that, as noted by author Vera John-Steiner in her book Notebooks of the Mind Explorations of Thinking, some of history’s best-known creatives such as Mozart, claimed to turn to memory to create their many Magnum opi. Mozart called his muse his “bag of memories” – a collection of experiences from which he gleaned inspiration for his musical pieces. Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman equaled the creative flow state to “plunging into the deepest roots down into the world of childhood memories.”

In fact, John-Steiner emphasizes the importance of sleep in helping creatives craft ideas from seemingly unrelated things, what she calls combinatorial creativity. She writes (quite creatively, by the way):

Among the invisible tools of creative individuals is their ability to hold on to the specific texture of their past. Their skill is akin to that of a rural family who lives through the winter on food stored in their root cellar… The creative use of one’s past, however, requires a memory that is both powerful and selective.

 Don’t be 40% Less Smart: Sleep helps us learn better

In the creative field, we are constantly learning what works, and what doesn’t, and staying abreast of the latest trends in marketing and branding to create more effective campaigns. Whether you’re learning from the past, learning from your mistakes or learning from the pros, if you’d just learn to turn in earlier for some z’s, you’d be a whole lot smarter.

According to the National Institute of Health, sleep is key to boosting our smarts. لعبة سباق الخيل Dr. Matthew Walker, a sleep scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, says, “We’ve learned that sleep before learning not only helps you prepare your brain for initial formation of memories, but that sleep is essential to help save and cement that new information into the architecture of the brain, meaning that you’re less likely to forget it.”

Dr. Walker explains, “While you snooze, your brain cycles through different phases of sleep, including light sleep, deep sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when dreaming often occurs. The cycles repeat about every 90 minutes. The non-REM stages of sleep seem to prime the brain for good learning the next day. If you haven’t slept, your ability to learn new things could drop by up to 40%.”

It may seem counterintuitive in a culture that’s driven by coffee-fueled long hours to suggest logging in some downtime, but as we’ve learned, sleep isn’t downtime. It’s when we get smarter, happier, and more creative. So next time you’re struck by writer’s block, artist block, or whatever you choose to call your creativity drought, spend some time under the sheets. Your clients will thank you for it!

Our society’s inability to unplug from technology and demand for instant gratification mean the attention and time we can dedicate to even the simplest tasks are decreasing. Even reading factual articles on the Internet is too time-consuming for us! Content shock, as we touched on earlier, is a phenomenon where readers skip reading articles in full because they are bored, busy, or disinterested. So how do we present information to readers that interests and helps them learn? Enter infographics: content that combines text and graphics into one. كيف تربح المال من الانترنت مجاناً Could infographics solve the problem of content shock, or is it just a temporary fix to our society’s short attention span?

Visualize

Content marketers and companies alike create infographics to convey boring material in a quick, creative and meaningful manner. According to Social Media Consultant Mark Smiciklas, infographics are “a visualization of data or ideas that tries to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood.” Remember the five senses: feel, smell, see, hear and taste. All 5 senses transmit information to the brain, but 90% of that information is visual! In an average day, a person is exposed to 174 newspapers full of information, with only 1% of that information getting through to the brain. Why is this, you ask? The brain processes images simultaneously and text sequentially, meaning that visual stimuli makes it to the brain much more quickly than textual stimuli. To be specific, the brain processes visual stimuli 60,000 times faster than text. Additionally, Google search volumes for “infographics” have increased by well over 800%. I prefer to think of infographics as children’s books for adults: mostly picture accompanied by minimal text. We teach and treat children as visual learners, so why can we not do the same for adults?

Inspire

Great infographics inspire emotions – be it happiness, sadness, wonder, or surprise. Great infographics use challenging content, tell a story, take your readers on a journey, or provide readers with a fresh point of view. As a marketing tool, infographics are viral magnets. They are easy to share due to their attractiveness and versatility across social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Because of their viral magnetism, infographics are helpful to your webpage’s SEO and can ultimately help rank your website higher on Google’s algorithm. You can also easily increase brand awareness by simply placing your logo on the infographic. موقع مراهنات Placing your logo on the infographic allows you to position your brand as an expert of the topic you are explaining. العاب كسب المال If you are not creating your own infographic but simply sharing another’s, you can use the infographic to add value to your content. Just be sure to give credit where credit’s due, which may include the author’s name, website, and a link back to the website or place of origin.

Learn

Research done by Barbara Miller and Brooke Barnett of the Newspaper Research Journal showed that combining both text and graphics is the best method learning information. Their summary stated:

“On their own, text and graphics are both useful yet imperfect methods for communication. Written language allows an almost infinite number of word combinations that allow deep analysis of concepts, but relies heavily on the reader’s ability to process that information. Graphics may be easier for the reader to understand but are less effective in communication of abstract and complicated concepts. … combining text and graphics allows communicators to take advantage of each medium’s strengths and diminish each medium’s weaknesses.”

Think of your favorite children’s book growing up; it probably had tons of pictures and illustrations. Children books feature a combination of text with illustrations because the combination of the two media helps children understand and mentally visualize the story they’re being told. Children have more active and wild imaginations than adults, yet as we age, we find ourselves referencing and learning from text-dense material rather than a combination of pictures and illustrations. In the case of adults, you would think that with a less wild imagination, you would need more imagery to explain concepts. Infographics prove that the adult brain still prefers to learn with a combination of imagery and text than with text-dense information alone.

Research

Beyond having great content and imagery, you must always do your research before creating an infographic. Assuming you want to appear as an expert in your field, it is essential to provide your readers and customers with accurate and up-to-date information. Use multiple sources, but not too many, to gather your data: too much information can fatigue or disinterest your reader. Additionally, use multiple sources to check the accuracy of your information. Include plenty of statistics in your infographic; pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs, and percentages accompanied with images help clearly illustrate statistics and other complicated pieces of information.

Create

Not every company or business has a graphic design department that can readily turn out great infographics. As a content curator, your biggest challenge is not finding content, but rather finding a way to present it to your audience that is both exciting and informative. Fortunately, Peak Seven’s team of dedicated designers can make your infographic dreams become reality. Infographics allow endless possibilities for presenting dense information to readers in ways that are interesting, meaningful, and easy to understand; Peak Seven helps you master these obstacles while helping you stay true to your brand. As 65% of the population are said to be visual learners, we should be presenting information to readers that interests them and helps them learn, not information that exhausts and bores them. Think you’re ready to get started on your own Infographic? Reach out to Peak Seven today, and check out some of our recent info graphics below for Skypatrol.

After watching Apple’s keynote for the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, it’s safe to say that Apple wants to integrate itself in all possible aspects of our lives. From the innovative Apple Pay to Apple Health, an Apple product a day may be enough to keep you away from traditional items you’ve used for years, such as the newspaper, and even your wallet. We all know that Apple is ridiculously amazing at marketing anything, but are there more exciting features that make me really want the new iPhone 6, or should I just stick to the iOS 8 upgrade?

iPhone 6 Exclusive Features
When I first began watching the announcement Tuesday evening (a little late, yes), I was excited to see what Apple had in store, but also very skeptical. Every product announcement that comes from Apple is “the best iPhone EVER,” a product that’s “going to change everything,” and they always, somehow, manage to convince everybody that they cannot go another day in their ordinary lives without this extraordinary new device. For every iPhone release, we expect the same things: a bigger screen, better resolution, and a better camera. So how would the iPhone 6 be any better or different from the iPhone 5S or 5C? Do I really need to shell out all that money for a new contract and a new phone?

Mobile Wallet
Apple aims to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday life, and the Mobile Wallet is no exception to that. Ever felt so inconvenienced by having to pull your wallet out of your pocket and decide which credit card to use? Have no fear – Apple has solved the issue for you! With the new Mobile Wallet feature, you can pay for lower-priced items using the integration of Passbook and Touch ID. Skeptical about Apple storing your credit card information and purchase history? They claim to do neither – instead assigning your credit card a one-time unique number that is used to complete the transaction with the merchant. Apple claims they won’t see your purchases or track your purchasing behavior.

Better Battery Life
One of the more exciting but lesser innovative features of the new iPhone 6 is better battery life, which means 11 hours of video watching and Wi-Fi browsing. As Apple gives us reason to become even more dependent on our cell phones, a longer battery life is absolutely necessary.

Faster Networking & Internal Processer
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus boast a 64-bit A8 chip processor and M8 co-processor. For those of you who are like me and have no idea what that means, the Apple iPhone 6 is now 25% faster and 50% more efficient than its predecessor thanks to the A8 chip. Additionally, the M8 measures your motion activity for the Health app without draining your battery life. The M8 chip also can measure elevation and tell when you take the stairs,
thanks to a new feature called “Barometer.”

Larger Screen Displays
As people have complained that Apple’s screen is too small to watch movies on (seriously people, go an hour without watching TV I dare you), Apple has announced that its iPhone 6 will boast a screen of 4.7 inches, and 5.5 inches for the iPhone 6 Plus, going for a “Phablet” look.

Improved Camera
Selfie-obsessed Millennials rejoice: the newest iPhone boasts an 8-megapixel camera, an improved sensor, True Tone flash, and an even faster autofocus. This means you can take even more selfies in a fraction of the time it took you before!

iOS 8
Despite these new features for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, most of the cool new features are available from iOS8, which can be downloaded onto your outdated and totally lame iPhone 5. Sure, mobile wallets are convenient, as is better battery life and a faster processor. But let’s be real here: nobody who has an iPhone 5 should be crying poverty. If you are due for an upgrade, I suggest you take it. My mom has an iPhone 4S for example and it’s time for her to trade on up, not because its embarrassing that she has such an old phone, but because the functionality of her phone is decreasing by the day. However, if you have a newer iPhone model and are considering the upgrade, I suggest saving your money and instead downloading iOS8 for free; these are my reasons why.

Health and HealthKit
Arguably the coolest feature for fitness geeks like myself, Apple’s new HealthKit feature syncs with third-party apps and services to measure your fitness activity in order to provide you with a “health dashboard.” You can measure your heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol, and even create an emergency card that is accessible from your Lock screen. While the new iPhone 6 boasts the M8 chip, which is more advanced in measuring your motion activity, it is not essential to the use of the app itself.

Better Chat
Texting just became so much more. Instead of being able to send one picture at a time, now you can send multiple. You can also name, mute, or leave group chats, which we all know can be both annoying and serious battery drainers. You can also tap your messages to add video, voice, or your current location at a much faster speed. لعبة القمار اون لاين Apple has also graced us with the convenience of tapping to see any attachment in the text conversation, instead of having to scroll up through endless messages. Thanks Apple!

Interactive Notifications
Ever been so-in-the-zone playing Candy Crush or Words With Friends that you couldn’t respond to a text? Drop down notifications for texts, tweets, and calendar events are now actionable, meaning you can interact with these features without having to switch out of the app you are currently using. بوكر اون لاين Hallelujah!

Keyboard Enhancements
QuickType will feature predictive typing suggestions, allowing you to not only type out messages faster, but finally your iPhone will stop autocorrecting to “ducking!” Additionally third-party keyboard support will come with iOS8. Apps like SwiftKey lead the way in keyboard support apps, which already embody the predictive typing software by memorizing syntax, slang, and social language usage. I hope Apple can totes keep up with all my abbrevs!

Integration of Siri and Shazam
Siri is now voice accessible with the command “Hey Siri,” and she can even identify songs for you and direct you to the iTunes store to purchase the song. I foresee many “accidental” embarrassing song purchases in the future of those who have had a beer too many. Way to capitalize on us during our weakest moments, Apple!

Self Destructing Photos and Recovering Deleted Photos
IOS8 will feature a “Recently Deleted” album in the photos app, for all those who may have mistakenly deleted a good photo (or selfie). Additionally, following the lead of what Snapchat originally was supposed to be, iPhone users will now have the option to make a photo “self-destruct” after 2 minutes. طريقة الربح في لعبة الروليت

Continuity Between Devices
When Orange is the New Black season 2 premiered, I did not want to do anything else with my life other than watch it. However, I was inconvenienced by the fact that my seating location of choice did not have an outlet nearby, meaning that when my computer died, I was SOL. Now, with Apple’s latest feature of Continuity, you can start something on your computer, and finish it on your phone or iPad (or any other combination of the 3), so long as these devices are nearby. Thanks, Apple, for helping me maintain my addiction to Netflix!

Verdict: Save Your Money & Download iOS8
Unless you’re trying to be the next Annie Liebowitz, suffer an actual addiction to your phone, or are truly inconvenienced by the fact that you have to have a wallet, I suggest keeping your iPhone 5, 5c or 5s, and simply downloading the software update. While the price tag for the iPhone 6 is no different than the price when the iPhone 4 or 5 were released, most of the truly great and useful features come in the software update.

We decided to have a friendly pushup contest one morning at Peak Seven HQ: designers vs. Darren. Who won? Check out the contest by clicking here!

When I was in 4th grade, there was nothing I wanted more than a Geocities webpage to showcase my obsession with Sailor Moon (a popular Japanese anime show). Geocities pages were the perfect beginner webpages: they started free, and almost anybody could design a page to their liking. “Cool” webpages had tons and tons of images and not a lot of text. But webpages that really were worth sharing were the webpages that had your name in sparkling pink letters (thanks FlamingText.com), an “under construction” sign that flipped vertically, or a dancing banana. These moving or animated images are called “GIFs,” an acronym for “graphic interchange format.” After being MIA following the demise of MySpace and the rising popularity of limited design social media sites like Facebook, GIFs are having a renaissance. But like most things these days we have to wonder: are GIFs back for good, or is this just another Millennial fad?

GIFs made their official debut in 1987, hence the painfully outdated name of “graphic interchange format,” Almost immediately the GIF met controversy in a copyright war that lasted until 1994. The disagreement ended in the winning company licensing the GIF format to other companies for a fee. Most people didn’t want to pay, and ditched GIFs for the PNG format by 1996 – a free, non-patented single-image format. By the early 2000’s, time had passed: we survived Y2K, Britney Spears was America’s Sweetheart, and the GIF patent had expired. ربح المال من لعب الالعاب Enter Geocities and inexperienced Internet users.

Before MySpace and Facebook, there was Geocities, and what better way to express your limited HTML knowledge and trendiness than with a bunch of animated images? GIFs are compressed image files, meaning they could more easily load for people with modem connections and outdated web browsers. The ease of loading GIFs made GIFs accessible for people of all Internet speeds and bandwidths. Remember, this is the time before we had YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, and Hulu: accessing video files used to take hours! How people ever survived is a mystery to me. Somewhere around 2001, a flash music video for the song “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” featuring a pixelated, dancing banana took over the World Wide Web. The dancing banana went on to be one of the most popular GIFs of that time. After the Geocities craze came the next bigger and better Internet trend: MySpace. MySpace was hot for about four years and truly kicked off our dependence on social media. Other than constantly worrying about who should be in my Top 8, I know I was one of the millions of teenagers who spent far too many hours littering their MySpace profile with as many GIFs as humanly possible. قوانين البوكر Why did we love GIFs so much? They were new, shiny, fun, and added a little bit of quirk to an otherwise stereotypical MySpace page. Once Facebook eclipsed MySpace in users, GIFs died out because Facebook only offered, and still only offers, limited customization aspects on profiles. However, like most trends including Jelly sandals from the 90’s and unfortunately overalls, every trend gets a second-go, and now is the time for GIFs.

Today, thanks mainly to Tumblr, the home of many GIF-centric pages, we have GIFs for every situation, every reaction and every feeling featuring clips from TV shows, music videos, movies, YouTube videos, you name it. Furthermore, companies like Victoria’s Secret PINK, J.Crew, and Steve Madden are cashing in on the GIF trend by using their merchandise to create GIF images on their marketing emails. لعبة قمار For example, Victoria’s Secret PINK recently sent out an e-mail promoting their collegiate collection, featuring an image model with the pullover sweatshirt she was wearing changing every few seconds to showcase different colleges and universities. Steve Madden often features GIF images in their emails with rotating images of their latest and greatest shoes. Even K-Mart got on the GIF-train during the 2013 Holiday Season with a “GIFing Out” campaign. This campaign featured commercials of family members doing strange repeated movements after scoring great deals at K-Mart, to which the onlookers would remark that their family member was “GIFing out.”

GIFs have evolved greatly past pixelated images. In addition to having a GIF for any mood, we now have “cinemagraphs,” which feature still images with only a minor repeated detail moving.  But what does this mean for the future of GIFs; are they here to stay, or are they another fleeting millennial fad? Kerry Trainor, CEO of Vimeo, stated, “We really feel like the GIF format overall really represents an interesting connecting tissue between what people typically think of as video and what people typically think of as still images… This is a new area of video creativity that we think bridges the gap between video and still photography.” With the attention span of users shorter than ever and the number of hours in a day ever dwindling, it is important for marketers to provide users with content that can be accessed quickly and easily. Sure, YouTube and Vimeo videos are great, but users’ time is limited, and watching a minutes-long video just takes up too much of their precious time. Not to mention buffer time! Enter the GIF – typically a few seconds long – short enough but to the point. Furthermore, GIFs can be instantly shared through social media, bypassing the inconvenience of having to click the play or pause button like on a YouTube video. Are GIFs the future of video? Will there one day be a social media site dedicated only to GIFs? As the popularity of GIFs continues to increase, I personally believe these are not such farfetched ideas.

So how can you jump on the GIF-train for your business? First, you can share GIFs across your social media accounts: be it Facebook, Google+, or even your blog. GIFs don’t always work on all social media platforms (Instagram and Pinterest for example) but they can help spice up your posts on social media platforms where they do. Whether you are sharing original, curated or repurposed content, GIFs can help tell your story with a little quirk and flare. Another way you can use GIFs for business is by creating GIFs that are centric to your work. In other words – don’t just use or make a GIF just to say you did. If you are using GIFs just to fit in or look cool, trust me, it’ll be painfully obvious. But when a GIF syncs with your brand or campaign, people will know who is responsible for that fun piece of content (you!). Email campaigns are another great outlet to create your original GIFs to market your latest and greatest products. As previously mentioned, Victoria’s Secret PINK has mastered the art of GIF marketing, as has Urban Outfitters. Lastly, if you are a website or blog that frequently posts a lot of tips or how-to’s, GIFs can be used as an educational resource. Showing your readers how to follow your tips step-by-step in a short, repetitive clip will help keep readers from second-guessing your directions, or leaving your page to turn to YouTube for help.

When words can’t say what you’re feeling or thinking, a GIF can. GIFs are like Hallmark cards for Millennials, except free and less compassionate. As consumers’ attention dwindles and patience is fleeting, I believe marketers will eventually have to be even more creative and find a quicker way to reach their consumers, and GIFs are the perfect medium. With GIFs, your creativity is limitless – the only real boundary is your mind, and maybe some copyright laws (watch out for those when using content lifted from movies, TV shows, and anything you don’t). Below are some of my favorite GIFs, and of course, I included the dancing banana. Long live Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/10/19/animated-gif-history
Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/7-best-practices-using-gifs-cinemagraphs-business-0939520#!bLjeQm
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-gifs-of-2013-2013-12
Source: http://victorious.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cupcake_dog_gif.gif
Source: http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070819174055/uncyclopedia/images/b/be/200px-Dancing_Banana.gif
Source: http://vspink.com
Source: http://www.urbanoutfitters.com