MarketTap: Corporate Social Media
Developing a 'new' character to advertise digital marketing services on social media and web
Role: Illustrator, Motion Graphics Designer, Video Editor
Responsibilities: Design and pitch a 'new' character to advertise a future digital marketing service from MarketTap.
Platforms: Instagram, Web/Mobile
Software/Tools: Pen and Paper, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Media Encoder
MarktetTap
MarketTap's mission is to help clients sell more online. They implement proactive strategies with the right mix of marketing activities in order to achieve client results and business goals. With an online platform where clients can easily buy and manage marketing services, MarketTap provides on-demand marketing support for small-to-medium businesses. From social media management, photography, content writing and or to social media strategy, the pay-as-you-go model stands out from the traditional advertising firm model.
Researching Visual Aesthetics
Each character featured on MarketTap's web and social media, as seen here, performed an action relating to the digital marketing service provided. Their clean aesthetic, non intricate and fun figures set the aesthetic guidelines for the creative endeavour.
Colour Palette
MarketTap provided instances of characters, as seen here, as an Illustrator file with the corresponding colour palette for the skin, hair, objects, background, and clothing.
The Final Piece
The exercise now was to sketch ideas for a 'new' character. I concluded that a character performing an 'action based' task would provide diversity. By playing on the phrase 'Landing Page', I initially hand sketched a male character who is seen parachuting onto a landing site or landing page. The character design serves to illustrate to new and current businesses that MarketTap could help clients create a single and scrolling landing page.
The Execution
Using Adobe Illustrator CC, I used the current host of characters as inspiration and evolved them into the "new" action-based MarketTap character. The .JPG and .PNG file was created with a 1920x1080px ratio for web and mobile. Moving from Adobe Illustrator, I harnessed Adobe After Effects to animate the figure. From reviewing the current corporate advertising on social media, the animation called for subtle and clean movements. From the hands moving the handles attached to the strings in the parachute, to the clouds bouncing back and forth, the attention to detail matters.
Notes on File Sizes
GIF's have a large and varied use. The best and most response achieve three points. The GIF is short, small in file size, and loops effortlessly. Animating the GIF in a manner where the character is always trying to land on the page provided an uninterrupted experience. The video file size, for Instagram, was reduced from 1.37MB to 0.986KB by using Media Encoder. A smaller GIF file size will assist in quicker load times when used on social media, email newsletters, and on websites. To reduce this file size will mean further looking into what frames are and are not required with the colour spectrum in Photoshop prior to exporting the GIF.