This is a college project, we design and created Snapchat Geofilters, which are filters that Snapchat show in certain areas that anyone can pay for. We had to creates a filter for a manmade, business, and natural place.
RESEARCH
I conducted research into Snapchat filters, vector illustrations and tourist venues/filters in our local area.
This research helped my to decide what look I wanted my snapchat filters to have, I liked the look of having text, or a title, at the top of the screen with an illustration of the place at the bottom.
This helped me to decide on what to make a filter for. I had to choose a business, a nature feature, and a manmade feature. There are a lot of good businesses in Elgin, all of them interesting and with a lot of history. There is also alot of manmade and natural features, which also showcase the history and beauty of the area. I chose Bow Fiddle Rock, with is a rock feature on the coast of Moray, I chose it as I loved the shape. Elgin Cathedral is beautiful and I wanted to bring attention to the history of the town. The Ditsy Teacup café was chosen as I thought it looked really cute.
This was done to decide on the look of the illustration used in the filter. I liked the basic style, such as the lady in the top right and the lady below, which is all flat colours. it is very eye catching with their bright colours and I like the 'pop art' look with dimension without gradients.
SKETCH DEVELOPMENT
These are some of the designs I came up with while sketching different ideas for each of the filters. The scanner used to scan them in was not good which is something I will have to think about and plan for when doing projects such as this again.
I feel like for alot of these I came up with one idea and just worked it in different ways, I could have tried some different ideas, such as focus on different aspects of features or trying more creative layouts next time to get out of my comfort zone.
SNAPCHAT EXPORTS
They were created in Adobe Illustrator and exported as PNGs with transparent background. This was so that they could be placed on top of other images so they could be used as filters.
MOCKUPS
These are the final mockups that were made in Adobe Photoshop. The images were taken from Pixabay and Unsplash. This is a good way to show how they would look when used in practice.
I like the colours I chose for this, however after looking at the mockups, the text is too light and can be difficult to read in lighter areas. The illustration is of the table and chairs seen outside the café, the lighting and shading is good if a bit inaccurate, would try and include some of the colours from the type next time to create unity between them.
This design is my favourite, I love how the Cathedral illustration turned out, it has alot of dimension and I feel is very recognisable as the cathedral. The colour pink was chosen as it would stand out against the natural and neutral colours of the cathedral surroundings. The original idea was for it to be a white outline but that was scrapped as it would not have stood out enough and would have been lost to the picture.
This design stands out a lot and is very eye-catching which makes it great for a Snapchat filter as they have to be seen against different picture's and colours so the vibrant purple, red, and yellow will help with this. The gradient adds a lot of visual interest and looks like a nice sunset.
IN CONCLUSION...
I am very proud of these designs. I took my research into account through out the project which helped me make a lot of informed decisions which helped my designs have maximum impact. If i ever did these again I would definitely try some more complicated designs with some more detail and try to go more outside of my comfort zone by trying different techniques and maybe experiment with some different layouts.
