This was my first attempt at print and digital materials in Adobe InDesign, so I was excited to dive in and see what capabilities we’d explore this week! I quickly began to wish we were working in Canva when I saw we needed to adjust the poster information down to social media ad sizes because I love Canva’s magical “resize feature” that does most of this work for you, but I’m glad to be able to do the work in InDesign as well as it offers more technical design capabilities. This week’s assignment was to make a poster, postcard, and social media cards for the Shaw Center for the Arts Grand Opening Celebration. For the poster assignment, I needed to include at least five images from a pre-selected gallery and all the text provided. For the invitation and social media ads, I needed to condense the art and text from the poster down to its essential but still visually appealing forms. Each piece needed to be designed with a simple, strong visual hierarchy and using the strategies of alignment, hierarchy, and negative space. 

I began with the poster, dropping in some guidelines along the vertical and horizontal axis to utilize the rule of thirds. Then I decided which pictures I would use and arranged them on either side of the poster and directly in the middle to give balance and visual direction that supported the information presented alongside the pictures. Throughout the poster and social media ads, I used the sans serif font Helvetica Nue with descending levels of weight and point, from most important information to least. I also ensured the font horizontal scale fit my desired spacing for a clean, bold read on the headings. I played around a ton with the font kerning, line weights, and positioning of the text boxes with the pictures until I found them visually appealing and impactful, while also following the strategies of alignment, hierarchy, and negative space. It is important to note that I’ve given special attention to the “open to the public” text because I’ve personally found this key to advertising community events that may feel exclusive. I made sure there was visual hierarchy throughout the poster by enlarging the pictures I believed most impactful and adding in smaller pictures to give a burst of detail. For the social media ads and print invite, I only used the main picture I selected so as to keep it visually stunning, without too many visual grabs from the important information in the more limited spaces.  

Between the Facebook and Instagram ads, I left the event details on the Facebook ad because I have personally found Facebook users tend to trend older and like to be presented with more information upfront, whereas Instagram users tend to be more savvy with clicking through to learn more or go to a link in the bio. I found InDesign to be less intuitive than other designs programs I’ve used. However, I really hope to sharpen my skills and add more InDesign shortcuts to my holster so that I can design with more “flow” and efficiency, but I’m happy with the progress thus far.