Pilot Project 2 - Week 3-4
- os3677
- Dec 7, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 13, 2025
Now it is time to create our second pilot projects! In the previous week, I had the idea of creating a horror comedic short film, but seeing as how much I enjoyed the work for DorkBoard, I am going to be continuing this and making advertisement for the campaign!
Target Audience
I need to tailor down who I am advertising for, and since DorkBoard ran inside our university (ARU) I am going to target towards students, but not just any. Since this campaign required you to physically submit a submission, although it did also have online submissions, I am going to target students who live on campus. This way I would reach a wider audience and potentially more submissions!
Unfortunately, due to my cat tearing up the boxes and them being thrown away before I woke up, I do not have the DorkBoard boxes anymore to use for the advertisement, so I am going to have to use pre-existing photos of them to use in the marketing. (Ignore the horrible attempt at photoshopping my trash out of the first photo, also that second box above the kitty got destroyed the next day :( ).
My methods to attract this target audience will be making posters and flyers, and pre-campaign social media posts. Posters would be good to put around university, maybe even student accomodation spaces, to gain people's attention while they are walking around campus, and flyers I would hand out to anybody, especially during Welcome Week as the first year students will always take flyers (I was one of those).
I have gone with Instagram to advertise as a lot of young people in the UK use this platform. Instagram has about 35 million active users in the UK as of 2025, and on average users use it 53 minutes a day, so there would be a very likely chance that my content would be seen by 18-24 year olds, which makes up to 31.8% of the platforms users (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-statistics-uk/). TikTok on the other hand has less active users, that being 24.8 million of them in the UK, with an average use of up to 103 minutes a day, but my target audience being 18-24 only makes up 24.4% of the platforms users, which is lower than Instagram (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-statistics-uk/). This is why I mostly stuck to this campaign being on Instagram as it appeals more to me as the producer to be able to reach more people and traction to my campaign.
Poster and Flyer
In order to keep a consistency across my branding I need to find a colour scheme that works with what I have already made, so I took the image that I printed out (for the boxes) and pasted it into Canva's colour palette generator. This is one of the quickest online tools I have ever used and is it very reliable.
To be completely honest, I am not a fan of this colour palette. The colours DO go well together, but personally I would not look at something if it had those colours, it looks a bit childish. I thought maybe inserting the photo of the box itself with the logo would look better, but alas it was worst.
I really hate this colour palette. It looks worse than the previous one, and looking back now I do prefer the previous palette. It has got more welcoming and warm colours rather than this miserable blue and grey.
Therefore, the colours I will be using are:
These colours are referred from the first palette I generated.
What size am I going to use?
Looking around online at different sizes for flyers, I have decided to stick with A6. There's a lot of benefits to it which are included in the screenshot below.
For the posters I am going to use the standard A4 size as they are the easiest and most common size which are put around university already, at every corner I see a poster at A4 size. This way I can also print them out myself, making this so much easier and cheaper.
Mock-up Instagram Ad
For Instagram I am going to stick to using their square formatting as it is the most common used in all the advertisements I see, also because I do not want to be using the same size format across all posts. I want to keep it a bit different.
Instagram's square sizing is 1080px by 1080px to keep it at a 1:1 ratio, which is a pretty standard pixel size. This will make my life a lot easier too as all Adobe apps tend to stick around that size for their default templates.
I am going to try using Photoshop for this, since I am not doing anything too intensive. However, back in A-Level I remember using an Adobe app which would allow you to make little bouncey Instagram ads, so I am going to try and find this app again (if I remember right, I think it got discontinued for no good reason).
Ok, so I think that app was called Adobe Firefly, and it does still exist, but it is all AI slop. I hate generative AI, so I am not going to use that anymore. I will keep my Instagram post a still image. I also found that Adobe Express is perfect for quick ad making, so I will give that app a go!
Production
Instagram Ad
I did a few different iterations of what I would want the Instagram ad to look like. I mixed up the colour orders and I stuck with using the colours that the colour palette generator gave me. I decided to use Adobe Express for this as it is very fast and easy to use, and that is what you always want when working with social media content, since trends nowadays come and go very quickly. I also just wanted to try out a new Adobe app, and so far I am pretty happy with it!
I really liked the second one that I did (with the yellow background), but I switched the colours of the title and Instagram tag, and lightened the green just a little as I think that looks better. It looks very warm and welcoming, which is what I wanted, and matches the previous Instagram posts that I have made. Therefore, I am happy with it! It is simple, straight to the point, and goofy which I love.
I only used one font for the entire thing, that being Ultra in Regular, but I think that is alright as it keeps it uniform and very legible to read. I also decided to use outlines on each text as that is consistent with the branding I did for the DorkBoard boxes, and it makes the text pop out more, therefore being easier to read. I also applied a shadow to the Instagram tag, to make it pop out more as an add-on and it just looks cool as it is a small piece of text. Legibility is my one important thing when I make text, as I would not wish illegible fonts on my worst enemy.
I think it's cute! I like the vibrant colours, I like the arrangement of them too, and I'm happy with it. I think that is all that counts.
I used the website inbeat.co to generate what my art would look like as an actual sponsored Instagram post. It's very cool as it lets me add a profile picture, caption, image and all for free! Did not even have to pay anything to download the PNG, very cool website!
Flyer
I have decided I am going to do one design, as realistically I can use it for both the flyers and posters, and if I was doing this legit then that is probably what anyone would have done in this short amount of time. So, let's get cracking! Still using Adobe Express as the templates are really cool and give me something to work off of, giving me confidence that my final product will look cool.
I started by adding the title of the campaign, the Instagram tag at the bottom, and text inbetween to let people know what this project is about. I kept it at a casual tone as I want people to know this is a friendly, comedic campaign and to not be afraid of embarrassing themselves (not that I want them to).
I added the Strong Shadow effect onto the rest of the text, and I think it looks better this way as the full flyer feels less 2D and more 3D and it's more "in your face" (in a good way). Also, this was my first iteration when messing round with the colour order, and to be honest I really like it instantly. I think if I made the background the yellow or green colour (I will always use the cream for text) it would be too contrasty and harsh to look at, and the purple to my eyes is quite soft and if I don't immediately wince at this, then I think it's cute.
I have also added a little call to action (finally, a term I remember from A-Level) to entice people more. I felt the flyer needed an extra bit of text to catch the eye a bit more. Once I had leveled out the balance of everything a bit more, I have the final piece!
I'm actually so proud of myself! Doing all this in the little span of time we had was so challenging, but captivating!
My reflection on this?...
I really liked it! I think I should have done all this from the beginning to potentially gain more publicity and submissions for my first pilot project, but nonetheless it was still great fun! It was fun experimenting with a new app that turned out to be one of my favourites, and I am proud of the amount I did.
However, if I was to do this differently, I think I would have chosen a different colour palette from the beginning. I still like how mine looks, but I think it would have fit my audience more if I used trendy colours, like sage green and gold. I also would have made a couple TikToks to broaden my audience across that platform, and to have another form of media to share to others. I also would have liked to experiment corperating mixed mediums in my posts, like printing out the logo then putting it inbetween textbooks and in certain locations that students usually go to, like a bar or the library. Also, maybe having a brand mascot would have helped to gain brand recognition and have people excited about a character. Anywho, it was all still really fun to experiment with!
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