Advertising your narrative: Design & Production of visual compositions
In our conferences -- just like all conferences -- you will get feedback on your narrative draft and be expected to make changes to it after our conversation. Narrative drafts only have 2 instead of 3 because we will not hold Classmate Review for narratives. If you have worked with classmates who gave you smart, thoughtful, helpful feedback on your other projects, contact them via Twitter to see if they'd be willing to review your narrative.
In addition to creating an original narrative genre, you are responsible for building two visual compositions to support this narrative. Supporting compositions can be either persuasive or informative or some hybrid of the two. To save ourselves any confusion, these should be mostly persuasive and designed to encourage your audience to look at your narrative. Basically you are designing an ads.
In the past students have designed movie posters, book covers, or web ads. (Note: this is not a "pretend" narrative, so do not lie in your advertisements. You did not write a novel, so don't advertise that it is. It has not reached the New York Times bestsellers list, so don't advertise that it has.)
Which type of visual compositions and how you design these images will be determined by:
Who is the audience?
What is the purpose?
the type of narrative you wrote.
What is the rhetorical appeals used?
How do the images contribute to the piece?
Layout and design?
The promotional images must be accessible. Your viewers need to be able to see it without downloading a link. This means you need to design a jpeg which can be uploaded easily to social media. In the past, students have had success using a design program called Canva. However, be mindful not to select a design template with costs money. If you design a promotional poster, but can't download the image as a jpeg without paying for it, that will be a problem in the long run. Same thing with Venngage and Piktochart. If you have access to In Design or Photoshop at the FSU library or the Digital Studio, then please take advantage of those services. If you want to know how to use those programs and live on campus, go to the Digital Studio on the 2nd floor of the Williams Building or in the Williams Johnson Building. Note: they are not open until 10 am.
This is an advertisement for Lego, which is a company which has the rights to multiple movie franchises, including Star Wars. Here they are using a narrative genre to persuade fans of the series to purchase Lego pieces for their children. Because Leia is walking away with an Ewok instead of Han Solo, it implies that players can write their own story. This is an example of an ad which is neither obtrusive not obnoxious. The images are more prominent than the words on the page, allowing the visuals to sell the product. It is a tease which indicates a possibility. You will be tease your readers to the possibility of a good story. What images will you need in order to do that?
When designing an advertisement, you must have dominant art, either an image or words which take up more space on the page than everything else on the page. This can be words or an image which acts as the focal point on the design - the place where the composer wishes your eye to fixate. The ad above uses the Lego pieces as dominant art. Some advertisements choose dominant words over images. This is determined by the message you are trying to communicate.
Considering that you are creating visuals for works of fiction, let's look at a few book covers for inspiration:
The Penguin Classic cover of Wuthering Heights uses dominant art, an illustration of an exaggerated waif figure to represent the character Cathy who dies from an unknown illness and haunts her childhood home. The fonts are less dominant and look windswept and cartoonish to match. The colors of the landscape are pink and green. The trees are spindly and creepy. Who would be the audience for this novel based on the cover design? Perhaps they are attempting to lure romantic-minded individuals who think waifs in shawls are cool.
In contrast, the cover of the novel True Grit has dominant words as art for this classic western The designed mimics a mid 19th century wanted poster with the old block typography letters. The dominant words on the page is the name of the novel, using white accents on the letters, while the next dominant text on the page is the name of the author at the bottom. Both are using the same font, the accent is all that separates it. The colors of this cover is the sepia-toned background, black blocky letters and red accents. The book cover seems to have a bullet hole with blood running down the cover. Who is the audience for this book? People who like hard, classic, bloody westerns?
Consider the type of narrative you are creating (short story, podcast, short film, etc.) and review examples of the type of promotional materials those types of compositions use.
When you are considering the social media accounts which would be most successful to attract people to your narrative, consider how promotional materials on that platform work as well. Consider where do you see advertisements most frequently? At least, which ones are you more likely to pay attention to? I know that my Instagram feed provides the least obnoxious advertisements because they blend in with the other photos in my timeline, while Snapchat, on the other hand, is full of bright colors, loud audio and appear when I least expect them.
Don't Forget:
These elements of the project are ALL DUE SUNDAY November 24:
Narratives Draft 2 - posted to your WattPad page and accessible via your Wix P3 page
Advertisement #1 - posted to your WattPad page and posted to your Wix P3 page
Advertisement #2 - posted to your Wix P3 page
Social Media Account #1 launched and accessible via your Wix page
Social Media Account #2 launched and accessible via your Wix page
