E-learning has received a big boost in acceptance just through Corona. PhotoWeekly, Germany's fastest photo magazine, asked us how we are shaping the success concept with online videos with TutKit.com and what our expectations are for the coming development. On page 23 you can find the interview: https://photo-weekly.de/photoweekly-20012021/0289700001611135827.
Matthias, on your site TutKit.com you have an extensive repertoire of video tutorials, templates and presets. What kind of content is most requested by photographers?
The statistics show that our Adobe Photoshop content is by far the most popular for photographers. This is especially true for the video training, but the Photoshop actions, with which popular effects can be generated with just a few clicks, are also extremely popular. Next in line are the training courses and presets for Lightroom. Demand for Affinity Photo content has picked up slightly this year. Especially the flat rate model with full access to all products attracts our photographers and image editors to discover content beyond their own horizons.
What connects you personally with photography? Do you own equipment yourself and if so, what is your preferred equipment? Or do you see yourself more as an editor and Photoshop artist?
We have a (semi-) professional photography equipment with a Nikon D750, several lenses and continuous light equipment in the company, because we create our mockups and also
textures for TutKit.com mainly by ourselves. Privately, I used to use a Nikon D200. For my main private purposes I am satisfied with the
today - to be honest - the camera of my Google Pixel 5 smartphone.
What made you decide to start your own digital training company? What has happened since 2002 and PSD-Tutorials.de? And who is actually behind it in the meantime?
Stefan, my brother, co-director and founder of PSD-Tutorials.de, took an advanced training course in web design in 2002 and came into contact with Adobe Photoshop at that time. To learn the software better and to have a practice project directly, he created the first version of PSD-Tutorials.de still as a pure HTML site. The content was our first tutorials. With this he set the foundation for our today's company. With the increase of tutorials the website was then connected to a CMS. It got a forum and it developed into a lively community for photography and image editing with 45,000 visitors per day at its peak about 12 years ago. Then came Facebook and YouTube and online behavior turned around a bit. But today we still reach a lot of enthusiasts and want to continue to offer them a professional forum for creative topics.
It was 2006 when we released the first learning DVD for Photoshop. The demand at the time was enormous. Then another DVD was added, and another, and so on. At that time, Stefan was still working at a sports club in Göttingen and I was working for the police as a press officer up here in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. During my parental leave for my first son, I then thought hard about it and realized that PSD-Tutorials.de gave us an opportunity for a business model. So in 2008 we both went into business for ourselves and tried our luck. Parallel to the expansion of PSD-Tutorials.de, we built up a very good team and our own agency 4eck Media GmbH & Co KG, with which we are still successful here in the region today.
We now have over 800 products in our online store and offer full access to all content in a flat rate model with TutKit.com.
To what extent does your experience from your brand development and the expansion of your web presence influence the digital courses and vice versa? Do interested parties also find courses with you in this respect?
We try to keep the entry level as low as possible. For example, most of the training content can be streamed during our free and non-binding trial period. Our range of content has grown in parallel with our own competencies in our work and creativity. While we were image editors from our origins, we opened up to photography and design relatively quickly. Training was added for web development and office solutions. When we realized that our clients weren't always looking for eight-hour trainings, but also liked to ask for quick solutions, we started to increasingly expand our content towards design templates and mockups, Photoshop brushes and actions, presets and textures. Today we can say that with us people strengthen their digital skills to efficiently achieve the goals of their professional and entrepreneurial mission. We still delight the private photographer and Photoshop enthusiast with the content on TutKit.com. However, our own positioning is moving towards digital skills for businesses, which will continue to include software topics such as Photoshop and InDesign or PowerPoint and Excel, but will also focus on courses on digital marketing, project management and cloud-based
solutions.
In times of homeschooling and social distancing, digital training opportunities have become enormously important. Is this trend also noticeable in your industry?
Yes, we are also noticing more demand for new approaches and solutions in continuing education. For example, right at the start of the corona pandemic, we were able to acquire a large vocational school in Luxembourg as a customer, which booked access to our content for the training branch of its media designers. We also no longer have to explain our e-learning model and the benefits for companies and educational institutions, because the topic of digital training has been on the agenda of most companies and schools since Corona at the latest.
In which area did you last train yourself?
In the summer of 2020, I took on a course on "Digital Marketing and Communication" as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Rostock with 60 teaching units. I had quite underestimated the preparation for this course at the beginning. I spent more than half a year of my free time and weekends preparing a nearly 500-page script and dozens of presentations and learning success checks in quiz form for the students. Researching my course was the best professional development for me ever. This time gave structure to my previous knowledge and further enriched it with so much more know-how from books, videos, and podcasts, from which I benefit greatly today. Continuing education is simply essential.
Where do you get your content from? And do you yourself give impulses to your trainers when, for example, new software or trends appear on the market?
We usually create some of our presets and design templates ourselves, such as the Photoshop brushes and actions, the layout and presentation templates, or the hand-lettering illustrations and mockups. We have six very capable designers on our team. We also produce some video trainings in-house with our team. In addition, we are constantly looking for people from the field who can support us with their know-how. In the last 10 years we have worked with over 100 trainers and content creators. And in doing so, we also give impulses to the trainers, in order to promptly develop new trends, also in the form of products. Our own ambition is to publish at least 100 new products per year on TutKit.com and in the online store of PSD-Tutorials.de.
Where is the trend going with regard to digital learning content?
With our digital content, we want to bridge the gap between effective learning and immediate application. That's why, in addition to pure e-learning topics, we also focus very strongly on assets and templates that our customers can use directly in their software for their private or commercial purposes. The trend here will continue in the direction of gamification. With the relaunch in summer 2021, we want to implement elements such as trophies, quizzes and progress bars with us so that our customers feel more incentive to continue their education. There will also be content onboarding for customers after they register, so they can be guided more meaningfully through appropriate "playlists" of learning content based entirely on their interests. Spotify and Netflix are doing it well. Why shouldn't it be the same for e-learning platforms?
Here you can save the interview as PDF together with the other articles of PhotoWeekly: PhotoWeekly 03/2021