Social Media Ad: Final Design

With how I left the advert for the review, I already knew that I did not like it and how it didn't match the souvenir which I wanted it to do to help marry the whole event together under one design theme. 

I created this image in much the same way as I did for the souvenir, importing the reference photo into my drawing software, in this case I used my previous design for the ad as I liked the layout, just not quite the style of here. From there I ensured that it was at the correct scale, before then blocking in each colour segment and making tweaks and changes to Gonzo's outfit to also keep that more cohesive across the designs.
Apart from the suit, which I chose a new colour for, to make it pop and resemble the sort of thing that Gonzo would use, I used the exact same colour palette as the souvenir. 

I made sure, as I knew that I'd need to use a lot of layers that I organised the file to have folders for each specific area, and then each segment with in that go it's own layer. The layers with the red line and indent are then clipping layers, layers that only affect the coloured areas from the layer below. I used these to create the actual painting affect, using lighter and darker shades and then blending them together using the paint brush tool inside the program. 

Keeping it all on these separate layers also made it easy to go back and change any shapes or the whole colour if it didn't work as is.

As I went along, as stated I changed some aspects of Gonzo to also help stylise him a little bit, it also meant that any shape that looked a little awkward could be tweaked and moved about. This is because some poses made in photography come off as unnatural or awkward when it comes to drawing it.
Keeping the original photo at low opacity at the back also made sure that the right segments were coloured in the correct colour as their was a lot of detail to include. The hat and change in suit colour are the biggest differences, and this is just down to the fact that it didn't quite work with the style that this meet and greet has set out for Gonzo; and with a character that has a rather exuberant and ever changing loud style it is important to create a cohesive version for a single event.

The background colour was changed to match that same orange as the souvenir, in similar blocks as the original photograph to add some subtle space to the image and not just make one flat back-drop.

However, once this was done it was clear their was just a lot of blank space above and below Gonzo. These two areas being the space that Instagram recommends not including any information so that it does not get covered with any of the overlay it then adds on top of this.
After surveying a couple of my peers for ideas on what to include here, the idea of blank film strips came up, to which I thought was a good idea, something not too distracting but adds some detail and fits in with Gonzo appearing on film and TV, so looking at a couple of references I created some to fit the space.

With the art aspect of the design done, it could then be imported back into InDesign. Using the same file as the previous concept, then the text could be moved around and the colours altered. Having the top and bottom design also helped place the text, ensuring that they didn't end up too close to these 'danger' zones. 
Thanks to one of my peers I also discovered why the painting seemed blurry when imported, despite knowing that it shouldn't as it was painted to the exact same pixel size. This is because by default InDesign has the display performance, under the view tab, as typical, making any image imported have a lower resolution then it should have. This was probably the issue that was happening with the vector image I was previously trying to use for the souvenir back; though I see this as a good thing as it pushed me into making another mock-up and then come up with a final design that I actively preferred. 

With the text rearranged and colours and fonts tweaked with, I sent this off to a couple of my peers and a few people in part of my target audience to see what they thought of it. They liked it, especially how the top, less important information as a more interesting but not as clear font, but then the important parts like the time and date being clear at the bottom.

I kept these two different coloured texts across both fonts to create more interest, in the design as well as to further catch people's attention as they'd want to see what the two colours mean.

Having gotten this design finished I can then get on to finishing the design of the billboard, with this now cohesive style both other elements have.

As I final test, I had it posted as if it was an Instagram story post on the events page, the client themselves would probably also have it posted as an advertisement story, which looks very similar, just with a pop up at the bottom section encouraging you to swipe up to see the webpage or further information about the event. However, this isn't something I can test.