Assignment
This is one of the more fun recruitment assignments I’ve been given by a potential employer; work with artwork for one of my favorite shows “13 Reasons Why”.
The task was to create different formats of the same ad for different devices. I was provided source materials, and explored existing artwork for the Netflix show. The brief said to complete the task in less than 5 hours.
References and Inspiration
For inspiration I tried to review multiple references from both the show “13 Reasons Why” and other Netflix materials. I looked at the proportions of the title on the canvas for the bigger ads. But also how I could alternatively use the Netflix logo, if I were to make bigger adjustments to the layout.
One of the problems I ran into was keeping all of the text from the original example and keep it legible on the smaller ad (which I think is used on Youtube). And I felt really unsure about having to remove parts of the artwork for the slim banner ad.
This would normally be a moment I would confirm with the client about the use of different assets. Copy is written deliberately, individual details of a brand are important, and there it’s important for me to keep most of the ad as is.
How Small is Too Small?
Ultimately I chose to replace the word “Netflix” in the copy with the Netflix logo. This would give me more space to have a slightly bigger call to action button. And it would also allow me to keep the other text a big enough size to be legible, yet not too big to completely cover the art work.
I knew this was going to be a risk, but I felt there would be compromises regardless. The other alternatives I came up with, created too much compromises to legibility, which in my opinion, were less desirable.
Feedback
All in all, I am happy with the results I was able to deliver in a short amount of time. Sadly it was not the result the potential employer was looking for, but I was lucky that they were able to provide me with useful feedback.
