In the Age of Rich Media

In today's day and age it seems like everything is constantly changing and evolving. The newest trends and buzz words seem to be new everyday. Today we're exploring rich media. Rich media is defined as the use of animated gifs, video clips, and more in order to grab consumers' attention.

Rich media offers companies a way to come up with new and original content that can really get consumers to stop and look. I am currently at an internship with my local tourism office and recently have started designing gif ads for them. I have never really dove into rich media as I did this summer.

Although the box ads are small, I have found that even just by changing up the colors to make it appear somewhat "flashy" can easily gab a viewer's attention and get them to click. I have an example gif that I created below.

I think that rich media will eventually expand from just gifs and movie clips to even more involved things like Snapchat filters and other social outlets where the buyer tends to find new things (such as Snapchat filters) exciting.

 

I know that some apps like Musically are becoming very popular. I've never used it, but it might be a great platform for some companies. I think that companies that develop their own apps are smart, but only if they are done well. It sparks my interest that so many YouTubers are developing their own apps under their name. For example, Andrea Russett recently revealed her app called Andrea Russett in the App Store. She's definitely not the first YouTuber to do so, but I could probably name at least 5 more who are starting to explore this adventure. Will these sort of personal apps start to become more popular? Maybe, but as rich media develops more and more it will be evident that people are always ready to consume something new.