Social Media Blitz

For the past week, we have been working on what our professor calls a social media blitz. It’s basically where we design social media elements using Canva, a web-based design application, in a week. Before this assignment, I had heard of Canva a little bit, but I had never used it before. I’m a bit of a Adobe Creative Cloud snob so trying this new program made me feel like I was cheating on the Adobe programs I love.

Before I talk about what I designed in Canva, I want to talk a bit about my thoughts on this program. Though I was skeptical before using the program, I found that it can actually be really useful if you need to design something quickly especially for social media platforms. I also liked how there were already a ton of pre-made icons and shapes that I could use to add to my design. If I had been using an Adobe product, it would have taken a lot longer because I would have had to design these little elements.

Though I enjoyed using Canva for this project, I found it very restricting at the same time. There were times when I wished I could have changed the leading of something or change the color of a pre-made icon (because I actually did come across one where you couldn’t do that). I also found it annoying that if there was an element that I set as a particular color or opacity that I couldn’t saving that element and then use it on another design.

Finally, though I liked that there were pre-made icons and templates, I have a love-hate relationship with stock photos. Generally, I find the use of stock photos to be a bit cheap and cheesy, but I definitely caved for this project because I didn’t have any photos that fit what I needed and it’s not like I could go “on location” to take a picture.

Here’s what I mean by that. For this assignment, I decided to make social media content to get people in my church group excited about a backpacking trip we’re planning for June 2016 in New Mexico (hence the reason why I couldn’t take a photo myself). Only a few people have expressed firm interest in going on the backpacking trip, but we want people to start thinking about it now since people will need to purchase equipment, especially hiking boots, in advance so they can break them in. People will also want to start working on getting in shape considering we’re going to be walking up to 8 miles a day on rough terrain.

So here is what I made. I made a Facebook cover, Twitter cover, Twitter post, and an Instagram post (shown in that order). I was actually able to get them to use the twitter and instagram pieces as you can see. Directly below is the Facebook cover.

Next, we have the Twitter cover.

Here’s a bigger view of the Twitter cover.

Here is the tweet. 

Finally, here is the Instagram post! You can’t really see it, but the caption was “Double tap if you’re excited for the backpacking trip in June!”