Ross Schmadebeck

Week 11 Design Showcase

November 8, 2014

Instructions

Now that you’ve learned about social media channels and how brand image is an integral part to these channels, let’s create some designs for these channels.

Choose a brand in the travel industry. You are designing a campaign for the Holiday season 2014.

Based on what you learned in class/readings, design images your brand could use in December for a holiday-inspired promotion:

  • Create: 3 cover images for Facebook — these should be individually designed with key differences in features (i.e. don’t just change the background color etc.)
    • Design to correct size as noted in class
    • Include layer comps for these 3 options
    • Export your layer comps as a PDF
  • Create: 1 Twitter cover photo option
    • Design to correct size as noted in class
  • Create: a logo-esque image with a holiday feel you could “overlay” on Instagram images for this time period (like the ThinkPinkBows example).
    • Depending on your design, this may be transparent.. if so, save in correct format.
  • Your PSD(s) layers should be organized

Blog

In addition to posting your jpg images and process explanation, answer the following:

Taking what you created so far, what would your ideal design plans be for:

  • 2 additional features on Facebook? (i.e. app icons/ timeline photo / profile image / ads etc)
  • Your choice of 2 other social channels you think would work well for your brand (you may need to research).

What are the key design elements you created that help create a sense of integration across all channels? (What helps lend to a visually cohesive, IMC campaign)?

Submission

Depending on how you submit, you may have multiple PSDs.

Make sure to submit in Sakai: Your PSD(s), your 5 jpgs, your PDF of comp layers, your blog URL.

Now that we’re two-thirds of the way through the program, the assignments are getting a bit more challenging, which is exciting to see how the skills have built upon one another while introducing new features and functionality.

In this week’s assignment, we were to take a brand in the Travel Industry and create three Facebook Cover Images, a Twitter Cover Image, and a branded element that could be layered on top of imagery posted to Instagram for a holiday campaign. I chose VisitFlorida, the destination marketing organization (DMO) for travel and tourism to the state of Florida.

Leveraging their, #LoveFL campaign, I created an adaptation that added the hashtag #Christmas2014 and then chose Christmas beach imagery for the two tags and VF logos to be applied. My assumption would be those in states and countries outside of Florida that would potentially dealing with harsh snow storms would consider visiting Florida, and its sunny beaches, during the holidays.

Using Layer Comps, I created three versions of the Facebook header, which you can see on the right.

For the Merry Christmas in the Sand version, I added an Outer Glow effect to both the hashtags and the VF logo. I also colored the text to match the VF color. Additionally, I added a layer mask to the image to help saturate the image a bit more using color.

To create the Stocking Palm Tree version, I left the VF logo and hashtags in white placing them over the blue sky. I also added a layer mask to the image to darken the image, making the blues pop more and to help the red in the stocking stand out even greater.

For my final comp, Santa on the Beach, I used an image that needed very little adjustments, other than removing a brand logo from the chair. I added the same tag treatments from the Merry Christmas in the Sand comp.

For Twitter, I used the last comp of Santa on the Beach which did require me to resize the layers larger, given the increased image size.


 Finally, for my graphic treatment to be applied to images on Instagram, I decided to make only a minor modification to the VF logo. While alterations to the logo are likely not preferred, VisitFlorida usually markets with imagery that already speaks to Florida. By adding a santa hat to the logo, it could easily be applied to Christmas images in Florida, such as the city of Christmas, Fla., Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party, the Holiday Boat Parade in Ft. Lauderdale, etc. I created two versions; one in reverse on the VF blue, and one in the VF blue which provides flexibility for various photo executions.

Overall, while I found Layer Comps somewhat helpful, similar to the user comments in the video from this week’s lecture, I think using strong layer organization with folders can equally accomplish this goal. I suppose the opportunity to reuse the same layer in multiple comps, like I did for my logo treatment, helps keep file size smaller all around.

Post Tags:

IMC, Integrated Marketing Campaign, Layer Comps, Photoshop, VIC5325,

Ross Schmadebeck