Balancing Technology and Creativity for Success

Jonas Hummelstrand has always been a hands-on learner. From his work as project manager for a Stockholm-based web services startup, to his time at Swedish national public TV broadcaster SVT creating trailer and real-time graphics, to his role creating visual effects for a Swedish television drama, his career has straddled the line between technology and design.

His latest endeavor, SuperFly.tv, follows this pattern. Founded alongside two partners and headquartered in Stockholm, the company specializes in high-performance graphics and animation for live broadcasts and other events. This allows Hummelstrand to keep his feet firmly planted on both the technology and creative sides of the business.

“I’ve always taught myself new things by exploring and being really curious,” he says. “I used to pick apart and build a lot of things when I was growing up. All that tinkering in my early days has led me to where I am today.”

Adding value to Premiere Pro.

Where he is today is at the forefront of graphics and animation technology. Hummelstrand has designed over 50 Motion Graphics templates. Designers can take these templates, customize the visual effects and animation features using the Essential Graphics panel, and have them play in real time. He has seen firsthand how designers are using his templates for their creations — including those who have been inspired to tinker with them.

“It’s great to see my templates being used as a building block for new discoveries,” says Hummelstrand. “Designers are deconstructing them and customizing them to meet their own specific needs.”

The process of creating the templates often begins with a blank canvas, with Hummelstrand getting inspiration from graphics on social media and broadcast television and then trying to imagine how an editor could, for example, change or modify colors and fonts without asking a motion designer for help. Through the process of designing Motion Graphics templates, he also gave the development teams feedback early and often that helped them develop the feature with professional motion design workflows and needs in mind.

Delivering solutions for clients.

Creating flexible, reusable graphics is something Hummelstrand truly enjoys, whether he’s designing Motion Graphics templates or automating graphics workflows for SuperFly.tv clients. For one client, SuperFly.tv created an extension panel to automate the process of adding trivia and telemtry to recorded broadcasts at specifc timecodes. “In ten seconds, they have an After Effects composition with everything placed with the correct duration at the correct time, saving a day of work,” says Hummelstrand. “After Effects has a lot of additional features to simplify automation within the templates and make complex, time-consuming tasks a lot easier and faster.”

Hummelstrand and his team also leverage After Effects behind the scenes. For example, they used After Effects as a render box for a German state lottery client. An easy-to-use web GUI is used to verify geo data from a database. This data is then fed behind-the-scenes to After Effects. The client then generates a video with a single click that is ready for use in social media channels and local television advertisements. In this case, the content features the proximity of winners to one another, which changes with each weekly lottery.

“That’s another way of automating After Effects and is an example of the kind of Adobe-centric automation we are offering our clients worldwide,” says Hummelstrand.

Learn more about Motion Graphics templates in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.