Anime Club at UC Irvine
Designing fun social media graphics to inform club members about weekly activities
Overview
The Problem at Hand
The Anime Club at UCI uses weekly graphics to inform its members about the club's activities each week. These are shared via the club's Instagram, Discord server, and email newsletter. However, the weekly graphics solely show the activities textually, and this made it difficult to differentiate the graphics from each other at a glance. To make it easier to tell apart the weekly posts, unique graphics need to be made.
Styling and Format
To maintain a similar feeling to the previous graphics and maintain the design aesthetic of the club, the colors I used for all of the new graphics were selected by color picking the colors from the previous set of graphics and also picking similar colors.
The main heading font, Mochiy Pop P One, was used as it is the official main font for the club. The secondary font, Proxima Soft, was selected as it is a simple and easy-to-read font, and the roundness of the font gives a friendly feeling to the text.
I originally created the graphics in a 1080x1080 resolution, but I later switched to creating them in a 1080x1350 resolution to accommodate Instagram's change to a new aspect ratio for post previews on an account's page.
Social Media Graphics
I used Adobe Illustrator to create social media graphics for the club that inform club members of what the activity will be for each week. To make each graphic stand out from each other and draw viewers' attention, I made illustrations that relate to the corresponding activity.
Working on the graphics gave me the opportunity to practice using the different tools available in Abode Illustrator, such as using grids to make isometric illustrations, the pen/curvature tool, and envelope distort.
I made sure that each graphic contained the key pieces of information for each meeting: that Anime at UCI is hosting the meeting, the meeting activity name, the meeting location, the meeting date, and the meeting time.
Bonus: A Little Fun for the Last Week
For my last graphic for the club, I originally planned on creating one using the style that I set for the rest of the graphics. However, one of the club's board members took a photo of the club's president, and club members really liked it. One person commented that the photo looked like an album cover, and another person suggested turning the photo into the graphic for the week.
Given those comments and that week being the club president's final meeting before graduating, I decided to pay a little homage to the club president and go with the suggestion to turn the photo into the weekly graphic. I made adjustments to the photo's exposure, vibrance, and contrast using Adobe Photoshop, and then put the photo into Adobe Illustrator to create the rest of the graphic. I decided to lean into the photo looking like an album cover, and since album covers are typically square, I used the older 1080x1080 resolution for this graphic. In the corner of the graphic, I put "Anime at UCI Week 10 General Meeting" in a style similar to the parental advisory labels seen on many album covers.