MIG elevates live and virtual events with Adobe Creative Cloud

Everyone remembers that “wow” moment when they attend a big live event. That moment when they walk into a convention center, stadium, or concert hall — see the lights, screens, and decorations surrounding them — and think: “I can’t believe I’m here.”

Since 1979, major companies have trusted Multi Image Group (MIG) to inspire attendees at their biggest events, conferences, and meetings. While MIG handles events of all sizes, it’s best known for its work on massive industry events — ones that attract tens of thousands of attendees. And as the scale of the event grows, so does the amount of content needed to support hours of presentations, conversations, and education across multiple days.

Creating content for the big screen

“While typical agencies might be creating in 4K or 8K resolution, we’re dealing with things like stadium screens that measure 7,000 pixels by 12,000 pixels,” explains George Kelly, director of media & interactive at MIG. “That’s a huge amount of real estate that we need to fill.”

MIG handles this challenging ask by filling each screen with multiple points of interest, stitching together graphics, and making intelligent use of negative space to make the screen feel full. With Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Stock, MIG is innovating in the corporate event industry by creating memorable audience experiences and even thriving during the COVID era.

Creating event-sized visuals efficiently

MIG teams rely on Adobe Creative Cloud to create the hours of content needed for every event. First, designers create templates for the event’s screens, then they work with the Creative Director and content creation team to design elements that take advantage of all surfaces. Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are critical for designing graphics, blending photos to create panoramic views, and developing other still visuals. Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects turn those designs into engaging, dynamic videos and animation. In particular, the deep collaboration between designers and animators lead to stunning dynamic visuals.

“Our designers know how to take advantage of the layers in Photoshop files to create something ready for animation,” explains Kelly. “Our animators and designers communicate effectively, which helps us go from still images to dynamic animations in very little time.”

While Creative Cloud apps are used daily by MIG creators, Stock has been the biggest game changer for the company. Events are often produced quickly, and MIG designers, editors, and producers don’t have time to create all of the content that they need from scratch. Stock provides access to millions of high-quality stock images and film clips to fill massive event screens.

“The search tools are almost magical,” says Kelly. “We can search for the terms that we need and find hundreds of great candidates in seconds. Then we can switch to visual search to start searching for similar images from the search results. That helps us narrow down our options and find exactly what we want much faster than before.”

The source of any image is critical for MIG and its clients. MIG appreciates that it can trust Adobe Stock's royalty free licensing and broad grant of rights. Stock also features diverse images from diverse creators around the world. This provides MIG with a range of true and authentic voices that matches the diversity seen in its clients and their audiences.

Innovating virtual events

The live events industry was one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. During early 2020, Kelly and his MIG colleagues began brainstorming a potential COVID response. In particular, Kelly thought it was important to capture the “wow” factor of in-person events virtually.

MIG often designs 3D stages to take customers on a virtual walkthrough of stage sets or convention booths. Using InfinitySet from Brainstorm, MIG could turn those 3D designs into virtual sets that make audiences feel like they’re part of the program.

“A lot of digital companies jumped into virtual events at the beginning of the pandemic, but they didn’t have the experience that we did in terms of what makes corporate events special,” says Kelly. “Sitting through an hour-long Zoom presentation isn’t really interesting. How can we elevate that and make it something that audiences will remember?”

Using Adobe Creative Cloud, MIG creatives quickly learned how to develop content that bring the MIG touch to virtual events. The company pre-recorded clients’ presentations on Zoom with each speaker as a separate video and audio file, then used Premiere Pro to clean up the footage and edit it together to create something much more dynamic and compelling. Designers retooled PowerPoint templates in Photoshop to make dynamic presentation visuals, and comped video of speakers into InfinitySet using After Effects.

“We ended up handling around 3,000 virtual events during the pandemic,” says Kelly. “We’ll always be live event specialists, but about 10 percent of our projects today are virtual or hybrid events. It shows that virtual will never completely disappear. With Creative Cloud, we have confidence that we can continue to push boundaries and continue to bring innovation to all types of events.”