Purpose & Objectives
Buck Art Studios is a client that is studying Illustration at BYU-Idaho. The client wanted to create a social media presence to start sharing art outside of the classroom. My objective was to create and set up a social media brand for Buck Art Studios. I focused in creating a style guide for posting and aided in the start of posting content on the Instagram page. The client was looking for guidance on where to start when creating the page and what type of content to post to stay consistent.
Experiences
I was able to gain a lot of knowledge and experience to create a brand for social media. I was also able to work with a mentor and found that very helpful as I am currently a student. Learning how to create realistic Instagram mock ups to help the client see and envision their brand was a great experience to have. I also had to recreate the logo my client had due to not being vectors and having some pixelization on it making it hard to use. I had to learn to take more time to make sure I was meeting the expectations of the clients, which sometimes took more time than I expected.
Processes
As I started this project, I felt that I was not sure what direction to take since at first the client was not very sure what they wanted. I had to take quite a bit of time to meet with my client to understand the direction wanted for the brand. Once the direction was clear, I was able to start working on content pillars. For the brand, the client and I decided that having illustration, animation and drawing processes as pillars would be best. The idea behind choosing those three pillars was so be able to create an Instagram with a portfolio feel. The account should work as a digital portfolio with easy access
Once that was created, I started working on a style guide. I would say creating the style guide was a little tricky since the client did not give me much. At this time, I decided to go to my mentor. She was able to share some ideas with me and even had experience in creating social media presence for art accounts.
After the style guide was created and mock ups were shared with the client, it was time to post. I did have to do a little more research in the hashtags and learning more about best posting times for art content since I was not too familiar with the field.
Challenges Encountered
I thought that there would be no challenges with doing social media branding for an art account but I was wrong. I found it was hard to be able to create a style guide and content pillar since the client was so broad. When I created some of the mock ups, I found myself having to recreate them to be able to meet the needs of the client.
I also had a hard time with having enough content to post, so I was not able to post as much as I would have liked. My client had committed to producing three pieces of art to post weekly but many of the weeks that was not achieved.
I also had a difficult time with creating meaningful captions. This was something my mentor mentioned to me and I agree, it was a hard part of it since art is so subjective.
Results & Takeaways
I was able to create an Instagram account and style guide to give the client after this project. I feel that the client was satisfied with the presence created. I was able to create posts that were on brand and able to gain new followers by using hashtag strategies. I was able to learn more about what this could look like in the real world. I feel that I learned a lot about communication with the client and understanding what they are wanting as an outcome from their social media presence.