For the last three weeks I have been playing ambient music from Coffitivity. It is designed to recreate the ambient sounds of a cafe. Proven research says ambient sounds boosts your creativity and helps you work better. Their research is based on a peer-reviewed study from the University of Chicago. To sum up the study they state some distraction or background noise actually helps you be more creative.
Here is the study: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
I also found a free link online: https://coffitivity.com/ (You can only play three free ambient sounds)
The vision of Coffitivity came from a team of creatives in Richmond, Virginia. They were looking for a way to help themselves work better. Since Coffitivity received positive feedback the team of creatives is working on additional suite tools to jump start / provide a creative boost.
Before I found this app I would either have music on low or I would play a tv show I like, but have already seen or I’d put on a tv show that I am not interested in. I know myself enough to know that if I watch a new show or movie, my attention will NOT be on my work. I find if it is too loud I get distracted by the words. It needs to be low enough that I can still hear myself think. I plan to implement this app for my last semester. When I am alone in my room playing the University Undertones or Lunchtime Lounge really made me feel like I was back at City Tech in the cafe with headphones on.
The second App I explored was because of Adobe Max that I had attended earlier in the semester. I wanted to become more familiar with Adobe applications besides the ones we use in class. I decided to explore Adobe Spark Post.
I plan to make a social media account and I learned that Spark allows you to pick from thousands of templates available on mobile and web. I downloaded it on my ipad because I often use Adobe Fresco on the ipad and this would give me more of a reason to try illustrator on the ipad as well.
After exploring Adobe Spark Post it seems like there are many free templates with minimal restrictions. There is a premium to the app that I did not have difficulty using because when I clicked on them I was able to make changes. The template themes are split into categories: Animation, Collage, Seasonal, Lifestyle, Business, School, Travel, Food and Craft. The templates range from colorful to monochromatic.
Overall I learned and felt the
- The templates are great inspiration
- The application is user friendly – It is not hard to swap out the template images and replace with your own
- You can change the screen size and resolution depending on what kind of app you are exporting to
- Color, Animation, Layout, Brand, Resize are all things you can edit in the templates
- Entire Adobe Stock* royalty-free photo collection plus a full library of Adobe Fonts available
- Easy sharing of logos, fonts and brand elements
What I learned from their website was that Spark is compatible with Acrobat and uses Photoshop quality images.
Check out their site to learn more: https://www.adobe.com/express/
