Case Study: Dirico & PhotoEditor SDK

Felix — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

dirico.io is a piece of software that unifies the social media and content marketing workflow from research and planning over creation to publishing. In doing that, dirico.io helps marketing teams to better organize and ensures a perfectly orchestrated communication at all times. We sat together with Marcus Burk, Head of Marketing at dirico.io, to discuss how they use the PhotoEditor SDK to provide their users with seamlessly integrated photo editing and branding features.

“With dirico.io, we follow an all in one approach,” says Marcus Burk, “that means that our tool covers the complete workflow starting with the inspiration for content ideas, over planning, creation, and scheduling to publishing. And just as text is vital to content, images like infographics or pictures for social media are also an incredibly important medium. So, we’ve been looking for a solution that basically could substitute Photoshop in many ways. I’m very happy that we are using the PhotoEditor SDK, it is a great and innovative product. One can see the development that img.ly made as well as the advancement of the SDK over the last years. I believe that it is one of the easiest to use and most powerful editors on the market and the integration possibilities into our solution are awesome.”

The users of dirico.io mostly work with the editor for social media images. Here, a few features and tools of the SDK come in quite handy as Marcus Burk explains: “The fact that you can import and save assets like for example a company logo with a transparent background is a great feature for branding on social media. We recently enabled the photo roll tool of the SDK so the user can choose pictures from a stock library and then edit them in the editor. So, now it’s possible to create completely new content right off the bat. You’d just have to choose an image from the stock library, edit it and then apply your logo to it. Our users are really excited about that feature once they realize how easy it is and look forward to saving time.”

PhotoEditor SDK is a great and helpful tool to adjust pictures directly in the browser.

247GRAD started out as a social media marketing agency. To facilitate their daily routines, they created the Facebook CMS TABMAKER in 2011. Later in coordination with the social media departments of their clients they created 247GRAD CONNECT (formerly PUBLISHER) for in-house use. To tackle the challenges of content marketing, they then expanded the functionalities of their tool and introduced it to the public. 247GRAD CONNECT evolved into dirico.io, a full-fledged social media and content marketing solution for agencies and enterprises of every size. To create this feature-rich experience the developers at 247GRAD Labs had to rely on robust, well-documented software with hassle-free integration, such as the PhotoEditor SDK as Marcus Burk explains: “Our developers told me that they love the fact that everything is well documented and that there are example integrations for various frameworks. And regarding support, we’re happy that we have people that we can directly talk to and that are motivated to work together when there are any issues or questions.”

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Rise above the Noise

Eray — Tue, 01 May 2018 22:00:00 GMT

A few years back, a close friend came by with a presentation she had prepared for a marketing campaign. Overenergized by this career-boosting assignment, she had nothing else on her mind for weeks, barely reachable and always stressed out. When she finally popped out of her little bubble, you could feel how proud she was, presenting me her latest draft with a gleam in her eyes. She knew that I’m a very visual guy, so she asked for my opinion.

While I could see the enormous amount of work she put into research, structure and storytelling, most of its brilliance was shaded by its design — or better, non-existing design. Oversaturated images, logos placed maliciously in the middle of nowhere, no concept of harmonic paddings, margins or color palettes. As a consequence, the visual presentation was an emotional flatline, to put it mildly. Slide after slide, I was in a constant struggle of ’should I tell her’ or not.

If you’re a designer, you might be familiar with this feeling. Your trained eyes can be a true pain in the ass, often triggering discomfort whenever something is unbalanced, or, let’s say, lacks a certain design attitude. In the digital world, with each ad, presentation, website or user interface you come across, there lurks an urge to set things straight, like with a crooked frame on the wall. While some might argue that this can quickly end in an unhealthy compulsiveness, to some degree this is important. Good design is an essential ingredient to the effectiveness of the underlying medium. After all, your design is the packaging for your content, for your message, and as such, it deserves equal attention. When done right, its true power unfolds with emotions; it can make people feel excited, and most importantly, **it can create desirability**. In the end, it’s the perfect tool to maximise the impact of your message and let your work truly stand out. But heck, enough with design philosophy.

Back at my friend’s computer, I suggested a few visual changes to the presentation, asking her to choose other fonts, pick different colours, change some pictures, and add more consistency to the layout. She did most of the changes herself following instructions and simple questions, which gave her a sense of ownership over the design.

Looking back, it was two things that were really frustrating me. On the one hand it’s my conviction that a marketeer should know the basic principles of design. You’re responsible for communication, and design is an important tool to shape it and helps to rise above the noise. On the other hand, it was also the tools she’s been using for the presentation and assets that were responsible for that mess. Tools made for designers, so a designer can craft the most beautiful visuals, seem powerless in the hands of a novice. Even business tools like Powerpoint do so little to educate and empower their users to create good design. Time after time, I’ve seen how marketeers, coders, product managers and business managers across industries had to rely on design departments or just struggled with their own mediocre design skills.

Who could have known that this frequent observation would help us pave the way for our own product. In our early days, when we built the first versions of the PhotoEditor SDK, we focused on helping developers to add basic photo editing functions to their products. With non-destructive editing and handling of multiple elements of the canvas we expanded our editor beyond photography — to a design tool.

Once we had all the essential functions in place, we started looking at every tool, from text over brush to adjustments from different angles. The most essential question was: how can this tool deliver beautiful output to those who lack design expertise? To those who don’t really know what character spacing is, or to the ones that don’t really understand what clarity does to an image and what it’s good for.

We believe in the vast potential of democratising design, and digital design starts with an editor.

Our journey towards that goal has just started. In April, we have launched a novel text design tool that makes text layouting a breeze. Our app Portrait showcases how we can generate beautifully designed portraits instantly and has already been downloaded over a Million times. There is much more to come, with tons of ideas, prototypes and data in our backpack.

Of course, making our vision happen is tremendously challenging from a UI perspective, and again, it is the quality of the design that will make the difference. As editing is a process that spans platforms, use cases and mediums — I consider this job a true boss fight for every designer. A huge challenge with a huge accomplishment in return, provided that we’re able to pull it off.

So, if you happen to be a designer, and feel the itching in your fingertips, just shoot us an email. Let’s start a conversation, and once you join our team let’s shape the future of design.

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Marketing – IMG.LY Blog

Case Study: Dirico & PhotoEditor SDK

Rise above the Noise