by Sebastian Roland
In this week’s assignment, we were asked to combine our skills and repertoire in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to make a line of ads that span across different forms of communication for our company’s rebrand. This was a really fun assignment because it called on me to directly pull all stops out from my toolkit to make the most engaging ads that would genuinely captivate me in a real setting.
Magazine Ad
As the only physical medium of advertising we were tasked with designing, I wanted to create something truly iconic that would artistically capture the spirit of YouTube Music’s rebrand, per the creative brief we were given for the assignment. I believe this magazine ad executes on all fronts, capturing the spirit of YouTube Music’s live feel, reminiscent of vintage music posters and covers, utilizing simplicity while keeping an edge.
Instagram Story Ad
For the Instagram story ad, I wanted to make something that was very visually loud, yet direct and clear. Your eyes are immediately drawn to one of two things: the new logo designed to look like patchwork on poster paper, or the message spread across the display: Everything you want to hear. Very visually appealing and quickly digestible in a tap-through on stories.
Social Feed Ad #1
In this social feed ad (Instagram, Facebook, other social media platforms), I decided to go for a nostalgic, retro kind of look, reminiscent of old live performances. Many people go to YouTube to play their favorite music, which draws visual representation from these eras and makes for a clean, still, sharp, and aesthetically distinct, uncluttered feel, while also adding a layer of character and charm.
Social Feed Ad #2
On this second social feed post, I wanted to go for something visually bold and storytelling. I was messing around with the logo and transparent aspects of it. I wanted to put something in the middle of the play button that created a dimension of interactivity with the play symbol on the logo itself; it is as if the play button is transporting you into the scene with the musicians and crowds. This gave me the idea to put a bunch of other frames of different music-event settings to recreate the YouTube GUI when scrolling through endless videos. I am genuinely really proud of how this idea came out, I think it’s fire.
Digital Background Banner
This digital background banner is pretty generic. I think most digital backgrounds shouldn’t overdo the noise because they are generally found in parts of the internet where users are halfhazardly scrolling through and not paying much attention. Overfilling this with text and content will immediately turn viewers off to just click off and continue, whereas making something not shoving information down your throat on a one-note, almost vague fashion will draw in people to question what exactly it is they are being shown and by who.
Rollin Roland 