Industry: Innovation and Startup Center
Department: Public Relations, Social Media & Graphic Design
Location: Kassel, Germany
Problem: Large Image Archive, Inefficient Access
The Science Park Kassel is an innovation and startup center located on the northern campus of the University of Kassel. Since 2015, it has offered more than 60,000 square feet of office and workshop space to university spin-offs and companies seeking proximity to academia. Within the PR department, Anja Pawliczek, Social Media Manager at Science Park Kassel, is responsible for social media communication and the design of visual content.
Despite a large collection of photos, working with the archive had become inefficient. The files were organized in folders by event, making it difficult and time-consuming to find specific subjects, faces, or themes such as “community spirit” or “collaborative work.”
“In stressful periods, I often reverted to the same few images—just because I knew exactly where they were,” Anja recalls. “That wasn’t very creative and meant we weren’t making the most of our archive’s potential.”
Solution: Excire Foto Office Edition
To better harness the archive’s potential and streamline the workflow, the team searched for a smart software solution. Key requirements included cross-folder, AI-supported search; multi-user access and on-premise operation for data security. Their search led them to Excire Foto Office Edition.
The team was impressed by the powerful search and filtering options of the Excire software:
- Automatic AI tagging (e.g., smiling faces, buildings)
- Manual tagging for custom categories (e.g., specific venues, event formats)
- Free-text search for abstract themes or moods
- Face recognition for organizing and finding people photos
- Cross-folder access for the whole team
“Thanks to the Excire software, I can now see all relevant images for a given topic at a glance—regardless of which folder they’re stored in,” Anja explains. “That makes the selection process much easier and helps us produce more varied and appealing visuals.”
Implementation and Use
The initial setup—including synchronization, face tagging, and manual keywording—took some time. But the benefits soon became clear:
- Significantly reduced search time
- More varied visual content
- Better use of the archive
- Smooth handover during absences
“The biggest adjustment was simply remembering to keep the Excire software open from the start of the workday instead of defaulting to the file explorer,” says Anja. “After that, integrating it into the workflow was easy.” The team also shared the manual tagging tasks efficiently and used the archive collaboratively.
Excire Foto Office Edition Benefits at a Glance
- Time saved during image searches
- More diverse and engaging visuals
- Efficient use of existing image material
- Team-friendly workflows
- On-premise operation for data privacy
- Simple and affordable alternative to complex DAM systems
Conclusion
With Excire Foto Office Edition, the Science Park Kassel has consolidated its extensive image archive and significantly improved the process of selecting images for public communications.
“Thanks to Excire Foto Office Edition, we now have a much clearer overview of our complex image archive. We can search across folders using AI-powered free-text search and keywords to quickly and precisely find subjects, people, or thematic content—enabling us to create more varied and effective posts and printed materials. And none of our image folders are forgotten.”
(Anja Pawliczek, Social Media Manager, Science Park Kassel)
