For this week’s required challenge, you’ll explore typography. This exercise is all about making font choices — how to select typefaces that communicate through their aesthetics, and how to combine them with other typefaces to achieve tone, hierarchy and contrast. 

Based on the event that you worked with last week, create at least three 12” by 12” compositions in Photoshop at 300 pixels per inch by layering cutouts, images, and illustrator graphics. Your goal by layering images is to create original artwork that’s engaging and communicates the event that you worked with last week in the typography exercises. Like the examples, keep at least one element consistent between the three compositions. Do not use typography. This week, your goal is to communicate the messaging for the event using only imagery.

The focus in this month’s Design Challenges will be on writing advertising copy for print, radio, podcasts, and video. At the same time, the required challenges have been designed to give you more practice in working with InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, as well as introducing you to audio production using Adobe Audition. 

In last week's design challenge you wrote copy for a print advertisement for the non-profit organization, Lucky Dog Rescue Orlando. According to a recent Nielsen Media Lab Study, audio ads increase ad recall by up to 24% over display ads. They are also more cost-effective and seem to have captive audiences as the ads are targeted toward listeners in specific demographics who are usually multitasking and not looking at a screen. With that in mind, during this week you'll learn about why audio ads are effective and explore writing copy for audio-only media. 

Video ads on Spotify are different from audio ads in that the audience is looking at their mobile device when the ads run, so that there’s an opportunity to support the audio tracks with visual elements that convey the brand message. For this week’s required design challenge, you’ll write and produce a 30-second video advertisement for Lucky Dog Rescue Orlando following Spotify’s specifications for mobile devices.

This week’s Design Challenge is all about sonic branding — combining music with sound effects to help communicate the event that you worked with in the previous course. Sound, when used appropriately, can reinforce visual elements and can create lasting emotional connections to a brand, a place, or an event.

You will create a text animation using Adobe After Effects. Your animation will be timed to a voice reading a quote from the event that you worked with last week and in the previous course. The purpose of this challenge is to help you to become familiar with the timeline, the layers, and some of the built-in animation presets in Adobe Audition.

You will revisit the Photoshop work that you did previously for your assigned event. By importing your Photoshop file into Adobe Premiere Pro and adding sound, motion, and text animation, you’ll bring many of the effects and techniques you learned about through the previous Design Challenges together into making an interesting, dynamic video.