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Questions & Answers
Fred Kwiecien is associate director of iMedia.
What is iMedia?
There are several answers to that question. iMedia is a service organization: a photography, multimedia and graphic design group within Academic Services, Computing and Information Technology. iMedia is a university resource available to faculty who need image creation or design assistance for their instructional or research projects. But I think, primarily, iMedia is a group of highly skilled, experienced, creative and enthusiastic people who take great pride in their work, and who truly enjoy providing exceptional customer service!
What services do you provide?
Our primary mission is to assist faculty in the development of media that is customized to their specific instructional or research work. It frequently involves developing visual representations to express abstract ideas. It may require the creation of new images, or it may mean creatively re-purposing the existing materials they already have. We explore a variety of possibilities, in keeping with what they wish to accomplish and what resources they already have available. If it involves our learning a new technique in order to solve the problem, it only makes the project more interesting! We also provide specialized training for those faculty members who want to do some or all of the creative work themselves. Graphic design is not a mysterious science; it's a discipline with a set of rules, accessible to anyone who has the desire to learn them. Faculty can create very professional results, given the right instruction and a little help. To meet that need, iMedia offers workshops in Photoshop, Flash and other illustration and graphics applications. Some of the faculty and staff members who attend these workshops use our instructional materials to teach others these same programs and techniques. That's great—a perfect example of the free transfer of knowledge! We make all of our instructional materials freely available on the Web and also will custom-tailor a class, if necessary.
Is there a charge for your services?
Consultation and design assistance always are free. Training is free. Many of iMedia's services are provided at no charge, or only at the cost of materials or other necessary expenses. Where charges do apply, estimates always are provided up front, with an emphasis on highest quality/lowest cost alternatives.
What is the most frequent request your office receives?
We provide a lot of training. Consultation also is a huge part of our service profile. But in terms of sheer numbers, most requests involve some kind of photographic work. Among their other talents, everyone on staff at iMedia has a degree in photography. Our facilities were specially designed with studios for object and portrait photography. We do quite a bit of on-location photography, as well. But the most frequent request is for something out of the ordinary—a 3D model, animation or interactive learning module, designed for a specific discipline and target audience. It might be a project for Architecture or Romance Languages; for Pharmacology or Oral Biology. It might involve documenting a prototype device from Mechanical Engineering or a fragile text from the History of Medicine collection or from Poetry and Rare Books. We work with content specialists from virtually every discipline. It's always new and unique.
Have the kinds of requests iMedia receives changed over the years as people have become more computer-savvy?
Absolutely. There has been a huge shift in the way people access visual materials. The average person can afford digital cameras, scanners and photo-quality printers for personal use. Graphics software is very affordable. Many people become expert in both image creation and image manipulation. Grandparents log on to view the latest baby pictures that a son or daughter just put on their Web site. Faculty and staff use computers and the Web in their everyday work. In their freshman year, new students will do at least some of their academic work online from their dorm rooms. Faculty no longer wants 35mm slides—they want visual materials created for use on screen and on the Web, enhanced and image corrected, provided in specific file formats and delivered via email. iMedia was developed in response to this cultural shift. It replaces an old production model, where professional designers took orders for visual "products" that they hammered out in a back room and then delivered wrapped and complete—whether the customer wanted them that way or not! We prefer to work with faculty in a much more collaborative fashion, to partner with them in the design and development of unique media products and services that are not readily available elsewhere, and to do it according to their needs, recognizing that they already possess a lot of expertise coming in the door.
What is the most unusual request your office has received?
Our involvement with UB Tech Tools has been an interesting evolution. iMedia started out doing the interface for the software CD. I'm now managing the project. iMedia's normal work process is based upon a project management approach. I was tapped to head Tech Tools based on iMedia's success using that process. The project itself is a huge undertaking that involves many service departments working together over the course of most of the year. It's an amazing, university-wide collaboration involving a great many talented individuals coming together to produce this incredible software resource for faculty and students. What a tremendous effort and a great product! I'm very proud to be a part of that team.
What is your background?
I have BFA degrees in photography and in painting, both from UB. I loved art school here so much that I also studied sculpture, etching, graphic design, filmmaking, art history—virtually everything that I could take a class in. I also studied English and history quite extensively. Later, I did extensive graduate work in American studies. Professionally, I was a medical photographer at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, eventually rejoining UB in 1985 as supervisor of the Educational Communications Center's Photography Unit. I was given the opportunity to develop iMedia in 2000. I can't talk about iMedia without acknowledging an incredibly talented staff—Monica Carter, Don Trainor and Jim Ulrich—who've made iMedia such a success.
What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
The question is: What does the future hold for iMedia? And the answer is: I don't know, but I'm certainly looking forward to finding out. I feel as if the door has only just opened on what we can do. I look forward to the "Next Big Thing," the next development in instructional media and the next opportunity to be a part of it. Every day we learn something new; our own knowledge and horizons continually broaden through service to our customers. My former boss used to say that UB was the greatest place in the world to work. I suspect that he was right. If I can add to that, just a little bit, I think that I will have done well.