Guy week reflection

For my guy week posting, I've decided to go look for articles such as tips for guys to improve on themselves.

For the first article, I've decided to pick something fashion related cause who would't like fashion tips to style up their outfit.

 The second article is a little more advice related, geared towards couples. But it's more generic in a sense that the advice is targeted towards both genders.

I feel that the main content of the articles aren't important in the start as long as they're geared towards the male in the relationship. When I suggested the guy week to Joash, I was thinking of finding out whether the male audiences who liked the Facebook group, are as responsive as the female audiences. This would provide further insights on whether to focus content generation for the females audience only, or to both genders. 

If they are equally or more responsive, then we can start to selective put out different types of articles out, in the future.

Also if Joash were to continue after we leave, he would at least have a good gauge on where to start from in terms of content generation. 

Mindmaps & Notes that I've taken down so far...

Jotting and drafting out mindmaps allows me to see the large picture clearly. For me personally, it helps to clear up any misconception that people might have, allowing the overall execution process to be easier. Here are some of the stuff that noted down/drawn I've written in regards to between and SMM in general.

I took this down during the social media analytics lecture in class. Basically these are the main points for me throughout the lecture + some information about the final presentation that we're supposed to do. I would commence the utilisation of the the various tools provided to us. However since the between facebook group isn't on Joash's priority when it comes to running the social media in Singapore, the analysis would be more useful to us than to him but it would be useful information nonetheless. It allows see if we are engaging the audience and or doing something right/wrong with our posts.

This is a mindmap i took down during the discussion process for one of our strategies. Main aim is to target the other half of the relationship in their target audience. (The guys instead of the girls). I drew out the mindmap making easy to see the direction that we're going to take. Along with the delegation of work for the different categories. Initially we wanted to collaborate with Vulcan Post to create a cross promotional campaign for the two groups, which explains my notes in the picture. However, it seems that Joash doesn't want to do that despite Vulcan post having a Valentines Event going on. So we just scrapped that idea.

Men's week Facebook post.

As what Yang Ping has posted earlier, we are going to have a "Men's Week" posting on Between SG Facebook Page. I've done some research that what the men will like to do as always and what always get their attention.

Based on my research, i found something suitable to post for "Men's Week" which is the dressing code of Men and "Why men like to play Dota 2?"

I have created an image for the post "Why men like to play Dota 2?" which is listed below.

This design is just a first draft of the post, i will continue to edit the image again until it looks suitable for the post. 

P.S. We will start posting on this Sunday :)

Sharing our Cover Photo with Joash :)

As we've already submitted our DMB CA2. We need to show our latest design to our client, Mr Joash, in order for him to give us feed back on our Cover Photo and use our designs if he is interested with them. :) Thus, i compressed my designs into rar file and upload it on our Between SMM Facebook Group. I am now waiting for Joash to see the files and give us a feed back based on our designs :)

DMB CA2 Mood boards .

When i post my Cover Photo, i forget to include the mood boards into my posts so i am going to do it now.

There are 3 mood boards in total, each of them is helping me to develop an idea that will aid in my final cover photo. Each of them look different and somehow i feel that some of my mood boards are better than my Cover Photo though ...

Anyways, here is the mood boards :)

DMB Video Rework

Following the comments from the lecturer I make changes to the Video by creating a clear opening to introduce the video and change the handwritten scene to a typing interface type. But still thinking of how to do "unintended" use of the app in the video shall look into it on a later date though.

Still haven't add all this scene into premier hopefully the whole video will still flow smoothly in expression. 

Opening title

Typing Interface

Finalized Facebook Headers

Below are my finalized posters’ designs for Between Facebook Headers. As stated in one of my post, I’ve edited the headers and come up with these new designs after presentation with Mr Leon and more brainstorming.

Chinese New Year's Headers

CNY’s banner concept was originated from my SG50 header idea which is to show the communications from the past to the present. It was hard to find antiques from the past so instead of doing it in the original idea, with suggestions on linking it to CNY, I brainstormed and came up with these two designs which have the same concept of showing how people used to send love letters through pigeon vs now whereby they can use Between. Relating to CNY, I used love letter cookies as the letters and linking it to the app. I came up with two similar yet different design because I'm not sure which was better. I am not so satisfied with this 2 designs though because I feel that it does not really bring out what it is supposed to be conveyed.

As for my Valentine’s design, my original one was only focused on Valentines greetings so after what we was suggested, which is to do it in a marketing way, promoting the app and after thinking from there, I come up with this simple idea which includes greetings and also promoting their app function which is the calendar and caption to bring out the app feature. 

//I've let my group members know to update theirs on their designs to Joash and i also have updated my new designs on Facebook for Joash to look and it and his feedback//

Draft Video

Finally, after staying back after class to draw the props and to film the video, our draft video for Between is done and uploaded on our class DMB Facebook group!! Though there's still many rooms for improvement ad we could've joined each segment of the story better, I think it was a very good job well done!! Especially thanks to Yak Siong for spending so much time editing it and fixing so many of the ugly bits of the props with Photoshop! 

We've gotten some really helpful comments from our DMB lecturer and hopefully we're able to edit the video to make it better to suit the liking of our lecturer as well as our client. 

Exciting ideas for between's posts

Good news! Once Joash approves of our newly edited Editorial Calendar and a mock up of how the post will look like, we've got the green like to start posting on "Between" Facebook page :D~~~~ I'm really grateful towards my team mates for finding so many posts for this project :) Though the amount of post we have will last us til much longer after the assignment is over, I hope he will continue to allow us to post.

Back to the exciting idea! My group mates have thought of a special "Guys Week" dedicated posts whereby all the posts during that week will be specially focused on guys. As we see online these days, most content are focus on females and not guys. Therefore it's time to shine the spotlight on the guys! We've done our research and have a list of links to the posts. Currently waiting for Joash approval as well and i can't wait to hear his response to it. Once again, good job my amazing group!! Keep up the good work :P 

DMB moodboard

Before coming up with the final cover photo, I made some drafts to try and find a way to put my message across. I really think there was a huge improvement from the draft to the final submission. Though most it was due to the use of brushes...

Not sure why my designs are always so empty and plain. Doesn't matter still trying and learning along the way :) 

DMB CA2 cover photo

We recently submitted our CA2 cover photo for DMB visual design module!! I must say i'm rather glad that the submission is over. It's been rather stressful assignment for me as i'm not good at design. BUT! This one is much better than my previous poster done for CA1 (i hope...). Joash wanted us to do cover photos to focus more on Facecbook and to create designs on upcoming festivals so i choose to do CNY as well as Valentines day. Anyways, it was mostly just downloading brushes and placing in the stickers. Here are the designs :

Just trying out something new with the different brush designs. Though it is very empty, I kind of liked the color combination. 

Tried different photoshop tools such as blending mode and this really really really cool tool called the spot healing brush. It removes unwanted people from the background! Initially this photo had way too many people in the background, making it hard to focus on the couples

For this two cover photo, they are very similar as I was just trying out different background patterns with the downloaded brushes online. The stickers are so cuteee. These are also valentine's themed and  I hope the concept is easily understood by Mr Leon when he's marking. 

I know it's still very simple but i really did try my best to  make the cover photos despite my lousy skills. I really liked the designs by my group mates though! They made the sticker look even cuter than usual and they really sold "Between" well, making their concept and idea really clear in the designs. GOOD JOB GUYSSS!!!! ANOTHER ASSIGNMENT DOWNNN~~~ hopefully Joash would approve of them and use it on the "Between" Facebook page :))) 

DMB final poster & moodboards

So we've just completed our DMB photoshop assignment. What I've done is a cover photo for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Similar to the previous poster design, I tried to implement their signature mascots in there to give the potential audience a preview of what to expect from the app.

Prior to the development of the cover photo, I attempted to do some research to see if my idea would work out.

I tried uploading the cover photo on an alternate facebook page that I dont use just to verify that none of the bars are blocking the photos on the cover page. In my opinion it looks pretty good and neat.

Since Joash requested for something simple, I tried to arrange the elements to make the entire thing seem clean and direct the focus to the two mascots on screen. This scene depicts 2 parent mochis handing out a red packet to a younger 'child' mochi. 

Between's target audience are generally unmarried couples hence the rationale behind this would be to get the audience to empathise with my poster building hopefully establishing an  'emotional bond'

I felt that I placed a considerable amount of effort into this assignment by self directed learning on Youtube. I don't particularly enjoy skills that requires artistic talent because of my lack of it however I do appreciate the fact that we're learning it as it's a pretty useful and important skill to have. 

Although my artistic skills in photoshop aren't as good as some of my other group members, I hope I did a good enough job so that Joash would post it up on FB.

Free Time

I had sometime while designing the cover photo so I tried making the stickers that Between shared with us into a different expression and since it during designing the Chinese New Year part I tried to get "Robin egg" to wear some cloths as his always naked and flashing and another was Mochi on scooter I tired to make their skin like flapping back due to the large wind.

Final Cover Photo

So during the week where we were given the chance to edit our artwork after the presentation I change it to this

Comments given before this was that all the elements in my previous cover photo was all scatter and not together this make the focal point to be everywhere and wasn't selling the service of the company and texture was not enough to be seen. 

Change the most to my valentine's work and for the Chinese New Year I add cherry blossom texture and two more red packet to the cover photo couldn't bear to take out the goat and orange since I spend hours drawing it so I didn't change much to it after the comment but i added gold glow to the Chinese words. For valentine's I basically made the Mochi which was Between sticker to be the main focal point.

This will be shown to Joash for him to see and comment and make changes if he wants so to further improve and  hopefully have it posted on the Facebook page.

DMB Video

We were finally done with the draft video but I would still want to blog about the process when I was editing the video.

1. Before I could do anything I had to open every photo we toke with the DSLR with Photoshop as all the photos was dark due to insufficient lighting when we toke the photos but luckily Photoshop gave us the option to brighten up Photos along with cleaning up unwanted stuff in the Photos.
2. Next was I problem as there was not enough shots to make a part flow I had to recreate those scenes with Photoshop.
3. Since we wanted to promote Between and Joash wanted it to be subtle we all decided to have one scenes use Between chat feature and so we added those in with Photoshop too.
   
   
   
   
4. Our aeroplane got stain with water so again Photoshop...

   

   Red part was edited

   If difference can't be told is because I Photoshop it :p
   
   
5. Adding all the photos and royalty free music together and we have our final draft.
   

DMB Ca2 Poster

For our Ca2 we had to design something to help promote the company for the upcoming festival and there was a lot of things that we can do and I choose to do two Facebook cover photo for Between and two of the festival I chose was Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year which are consider festival that are quite celebrated by Singaporean. 

Another reason was that we discuss with Joash before and he said that he would prefer as to design for festival that will generally last longer so that the cover photo will be up on the Facebook page for a longer period. Even though Valentine's Day was a one day festival I still chose to design for this festival was since Between is for couple I wanted to try designing it even though they might have designers from their side who will be designing for this festival.

Both was this was the first one I came out with for Between and this would be shown to Mr Leon where he will grade and give comment to it for us to change :D

Research on New Content

Joash commented that alot of our previous content that we wanted to post on Facebook wasn't very good and since I was doing event some of the comment that i get was that either the event has pass or the link to the article seems too promotional.

There isn't much event happening in Singapore for couples this few months that is so I change what I was initially suppose to research on to what couples can do together or go.

Found two and one of them was cooking together why I chose this was that I think It would be interesting for couples to try cooking or baking together or even make candy together.

Second was for couple to try out a staycation and this website features website that they can stay in that are quite cool and within budget.

Links for this two website are here :)

Couple Cooking Class

Singapore Staycations

Posts Images (Self Creation)

As stated in my previous post, about adding images to every post, I are searching for photos/images to post with the links posts now. I don’t know how my other group mates find their photos but mainly, YangPing says is to find from their international Facebook. I went online to find but I wasn’t really able to find images I want that are copyright free images and also from the international FB, so I used photos taken by myself and also stickers/images from Between but with edits done by myself. Below are examples of images I am going to use for my posts which either I took it by myself or I edited it with the help of Photoshop. 

Note: I have sent these images with the exact posts' caption and links to YangPing so that she can collate and send Joash tonight for official approval and we can start posting on their Facebook!! Anticipating and feeling excitedd!!

Facebook Posts (captions)

After giving YangPing the posts I have researched and done for Between Facebook for posting, she send it to Joash for approval and we got feedbacks such as adding photos to every posts as it feels a bit lacking to just have links.

Regarding the posts I submitted for my part, I make sure I have variations like links, images or captions. I ask for the feedbacks Joash left for my posts to YangPing, and this is one point whereby I need to improve on: my posts’ captions weren’t strong enough.  However, he helped to edit the posts’ captions already which was something I am very grateful as I also learnt more on which kind of captions can capture readers attention. 

Highlighted words are captions Joash edited in and the words without highlights are my original captions. 

Other than these captions, I've got some other posts prepared too but was either rejected by Joash due to being too promotional or me thinking it is not up to standard thus not sending for approval. Other than the captions, I have articles/links from online and also images for every posts scheduled which is what I'm going to talk about in my next post.

Editorial Calendar and FB rights! (Processing)

After knowing that YangPing Facebook messaged Joash about editorial calender and not having replies yet, I decided to send him an email regarding it as we did slight edits and also asking about the Facebook rights after informing YangPing that I will be sending him an email. Below are the screenshots of the emails, and conversations. I have forwarded the email to YangPing as she’s the group leader so she will continue contacting Joash on the posts and I will assist her in any ways that she needs help from and also provide her with my own suggestions.

He accepted all our posts which is a very GOOD and HAPPY thing! Hahah! Though, we might be posting a week later than expected, at least we got approval and are going to get posting rights from them. Currently, we will be doing the exact posts (links + images + captions + etc.) of what is going to be posted to send him for double check before actually posting it.

APPROVAL OF POSTERS POSTING YAYY!!

After getting Ms Dora’s feedback on the posters’ decision, I emailed Joash immediately to let him know about it and also arranged all the posters from my group to send it to him. Below are screenshots of my conversation with Ms Dora and Joash. Really happy that he have approved and decided to post our posters with what he suggested. I’ve informed my group members on his approval and decisions of the posting on posters. So happy that he’s going to use our posters. Hope that what we suggested too can help in increasing engagement rates and also increase their Facebook fans. 

Note: During the confirmation of these posters, I also helped emailed Joash on our editorial calendar which I will be talking about it in the next post.