Transcripts
1. Intro: Okay, So if you're anything like me, one of the last things that you do and one of things you probably put off the most is creating your social media thumbnail images there, well branded and perfect for each platform. Ah, lot of the tools out there, like Canada or even Adobe Spark. They're really hard to get into the details and create consistent templates. We're gonna create a very quick, consistent template for you to use over and over and over again. This class is probably give you if you're starting a blogger or starting to use social media, and you're starting to realize that there's a little bit of overwhelmed with all the different images that you're supposed to create and things aren't looking very consistent. And you wanna kind of try a different workflow and see if that works for you. So you're class projects can be super simple. Create your own document, put your own branded elements in there and get that consistency across the board for all of those and then say about one of those images and upload those to the project Porter so we can see what you've done. All right, so I want to keep this class short and sweet. The goal here is to save time. So do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button and let's jump in.
2. Document & Master Page Setup: Okay, so if you've been following along with all my courses, you know that set up and organization is super key for me because it is going to say this a lot of time down the road. So let's dig in and set this document up with master pages guides, all those things that is gonna roll downhill as we start to create our different sized templates for different social media and cover thumbnails. So it's digging. So first things first, let's switch our document to pixels, and we're gonna start with a square document because that's gonna help us set up our template with some vertical guy tours on all guides that are gonna waterfall down. But it's also going to help us in repurpose ing these for different layouts that starting with square something with simple wonder one rhythms just makes things a lot easier. And you can kind of get more complex down the river. So set this up and we're gonna go and set this up too. A good size for instagram. So let's go with 10 80 what, 10. 80 And I don't like facing master pages, but what we are going to do is set up to columns and a gutter with of 60. Let's do our top margins at 60 as well, and you'll see what's gonna happen when we do that. So let's create that document and you can see we have some nice clean space or on the edges and right down through the middle. So first things first, let's jump over to our master page and we're gonna add a couple more guides here. Let's make sure we have our snap two guides on so snapped a document grid and we're just gonna extend some of these guides off the page. Personally, I like how those are a little bit more visible so quickly extending is off the page. And again, we're doing these in our master page so that as we change the sizes of our master page, these are gonna kind of stay put. So let's add another column here. I know that this is a 10 80 by 10 80 document. So if I want to center that, I can actually go up here and put in the exact coordinates of what that center is. So 10 80 divided by two is 5 40 and I know that I want to match my vertical columns and let's go and do 30 on each side of that. So you jump up there, but negative 30. And that's gonna go right where I needed to go. Make this positive. 30 and last, but not least at that center guide. Make sure that that is set 5 40 So now we have this really nice document. I'm kind of a Swiss style designer. Like my grids like my repetition and rhythm. So I like to start a lot of things with a very strong grid. And this is a great foundation for all of our master pages to come. So now the beautiful thing about this is now that we have this simple master page set up square square ratios, what I'm gonna do is duplicate this master page and you'll see that all of these guys are gonna remain fairly consistent. We're gonna have to modify a few of them. It's super quick. Okay, So to duplicate this master page, there's a couple different ways we can do it, show you what we don't want to do and then I'll show you what we do want to do So we don't want to just right click and duplicate Master spread A What we do want to do is go to the drop down menu and create a new master page and in here were able to create that based on Master Page A and we're gonna make this or high definition master page. So let's go with 1920 by 10. 80. And because I know this is our high def masturbate, which is also easily repurposed for YouTube. I'm gonna name this appropriately so HD slash Why t So I'm gonna and my pixel dimensions because it's easily seen whenever we're working on this document on the road. And I'm also going to change the prefix here to something that makes sense. So HD Why t So you see what happened is on this master page. It held true to a lot of those guides that I already had set up because I had pulled some of those guys off the pages. I now have my center guides horizontally and vertically and some column guides. So this pages aren't set up perfectly for high death and YouTube. So now what I can go dio is do the same thing, but for let's say Pinterest, which is 600 by 900. So once again go to the drop down menu New Master Page based on Master A. And we're going to go to 600 by 900 which is a good size for Pinterest. That's your to buy three ratio. Change that to 609 100 and also change the prefix. So that shows up perfectly. So now that we have our Pinterest set up, we'll take a look at that master page and you can see again. All of our guides are already set up, margins already set up. We can probably adjust this because it's actually the pixel. Dimensions are about half of what they were for other, for other templates that we have so to be a little bit more consistent. What we can do is just modify our margins and columns on this particular page. Let's say changed at 2 30 change the gutter to 30 and what we can do is override all master page items because this master page was based on another master page. It wants to hold true to those master page items, which is great for starting out. But if we wanna just this so that all of our proportions are better, we need to go ahead and have access to being about just those. So now that I've released those master page items, I could just match up all of these guides and be more consistent. So let me do that real quick. Okay? So now if we jump back and forth, we look at our a master, which is perfect for Instagram. So what I could do there is actually just duplicate master spread a make that change our options to be, uh so now we have all over templates set up perfectly. Simply, drag goes down into our live area, get rid of that original, and you can see that we have are Hi def YouTube, her Pinterest and instagram. They're labeled extremely well, and if we jump to all of them, we can see that we have all of our guides set up with some consistency. So just to keep this class short and respect your time, we're gonna stick with these three sizes of master pages and now will jump into the next module where we're gonna add some branded elements which we're gonna repurpose down the road quickly and easily. Alright. See? There
3. Adding Branded Elements: Okay, so we now have three master pages set up for three or four different social media networks . Again, you can add to those subtract from those. Make this perfect for yourself later. But we're just gonna use these three for are set up. But now that we have those, we're gonna jump in and start adding are branded elements. Now what I like to do here is start with a square template and build my typographical elements. First, get a good foundation there, take that, repurpose it to be used with photographic element. And then we can now take those two and use them down the road on whichever size thumbnails whatsoever which have a network thumbnails we're gonna be using. So first things first, what's going here and make two different layers. Let's make this first layer our text layer and add another layer and make this our background. But those in the right spots What we're gonna do is we're gonna use these outside margins and guides to create our safe space. So So I've created a document off to the side so that Aiken quickly copy and paste and things in here and speed up this course for you. Uh, don't get into the nitty gritty of what design I have here. I kept these elements very simple just to show you the techniques and what we're trying to create. You go do your own branding later and create your own unique style. So in this document, I have the text layer in a background layer. I'm gonna quickly grab my background elements and go back to our document. So if I paste these on my documents, they're going to drop in perfectly on the background layer could turn that on and off. So now let's jump back over and grab our type. So make sure that our text layer selected and if we paste these in place, which that's a tough keyboard command to remember. But I use it all the time, but good pace, those in place. And here's the big thing that I want you to notice that I've done in designing these typographical elements, I have extended the text boxes to the left into the right Teoh align with this perfect square that we're using. I've done that with every single one of these text elements. You're not gonna understand why that's important right now, but you're gonna understand the next module when we're starting to repurpose thes for different size templates and columns. Why, that's gonna come very handy. So get in there, designed some elements for yourself, but use some of these edges as anchor elements or use some of these guy guides as anchor elements for your text boxes. And we're gonna dig into that in the next module. So the next time you want to do is actually duplicate this. So I'm just gonna hold down option do pupate that instagram set up which on Lee has typographical elements. And now we want to repurpose these branded elements whenever we're gonna be using an image which is very realistic. So again, I've already done that. I'm a cheater, So I'm just gonna paste in place these typographic elements, which I've already redesigned to an appropriate size so that we can start to include an image. Now recover that modify that a little bit, make things met, make my stuff matchup, and I'm gonna go and copy my image paste in place so again wrote quickly What we've done in this module is simply create your base typographic branded elements in your base background designs. And then we've gone ahead and said, OK, their likelihood is we're going to need to use that with the image. So let's get that standardized image in for this particular template for this 10 80 by 10 80 instagram template. And we're gonna now show you how to repurpose that. So in the next module, we're gonna take these base elements and we're gonna drop them on our other sized thumbnails very quickly. So the jump in
4. Repurposing & Exporting: Okay, so now that we've created are simple branded elements that goes for us to jump over and add those elements to the different size templates. And that's what we're gonna use for our quick repurpose ing. Once you create your next block poster your next YouTube video and you need to create those 45 images, all these things will be said. So let's jump into that. So we already have our 10 80 by 10. 80 set up for an instagram posts, and we have our simple typographic and our typographic with image. So what we want to do is add those elements to our high def YouTube example. So I know that typically, I'm gonna want to use image based elements for those. So let me copy those background elements and paste them onto my high def YouTube background . First things I'm gonna do is make sure that that is aligned to my page. I'm gonna use the fill frame proportionally, not my background colors are consistent. And then the next choice is what I want to do with this image. Well, to be consistent, I'm gonna leave that little sliver on the right and then once again simply hit pilfering proportionately put my image where I want to put it. And our background elements are very similar for these two examples. If you notice we've been grabbing from this square template with more of the horizontal type treatment at the bottom. So if we add that to our high def YouTube, it's not gonna fit. That's exactly why we created two different templates for us toe build our other page templates from. So instead of grabbing from our image based template, I'm gonna grab my typographic elements from this page. And now again, by using our general set up and grabbing, holding shift command and re sizing, everything starts to fall in line. We can simply adjust those things. And just like that, we re purposed those elements quickly, easily. You can find, too, in these things. But just see how quickly we did that. And now we have our high def YouTube example. Let's jump in and do the exact same thing. But for Pinterest example. So we have essentially two square pallets here. So now that I've created this fairly square image, gonna go and drop that resize the way that we probably know that we're gonna use it to be consistent. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and grab that other background element. I can quickly re size that box just to make it 600 by 600 or I'm sorry, 600 by 900. And in my alignment panel, if I make sure that a line two pages selected quickly center that up, had our fill frame proportionally tool, and send that to the back. Last thing I would want to do background element. And now we have our background set upon that Pinterest page. Gonna go back up here and grab this typography, knowing that that's probably gonna fit in this template the best way. And again, if I simply hit shift command, grab that whole group. It will shrink down to fit close to our proportions that we're looking for. Make sure that those air centered on the page quickly adjust that background box. So just that quickly we have are three different size pages with all of our graphics and elements in there were purpose them. And now we need to do is export these images out and they're ready for us to upload. So that's super simple All we need to do is go to file export. We're gonna export. These is J pigs for most of our use as social media images, we don't need super high def images, especially if you're uploading these to your website for use as you're like Pinterest pinning image. We want those things to move quickly. They're gonna get down, sampled whenever you import them into those social media networks anyways. So I tend simply do these a 72 d p i I will do them either medium or low resolution. I will stick with medium here and I only need pages. Let's say one, three and four. So now that those air exported, all we need to do is jump over and rename them, so I can quickly just look. The 1st 1 was instagram. Second was high def. 13 was Pinterest so quickly renamed those? Okay, so that's that. Those images already, and let's just wrap it up. I'll give you a couple more tips in the next video to reuse this document down the road and really have some success banging these things out in the future.
5. Wrap-up & Saving As Template: All right, so that's it. You've created your document. You've added your branded elements, and now you can quickly repurpose this down the road. One thing I want to show you real quick, though, is to save this based document as a template. Then you can always start from there and keep that original, pristine document and do a save as every time, so real quickly. What I would do is go in and do a save as and save this document as a template. And what that does is it changes it to an i N d t. I will say that. And now every time I want to start a new document, I can simply click on that I M d t document. And what it does is it opens up an untitled document. I could do a save as and then your pristine, original branded documents always gonna be safe. All right, so I hope this helps you out down the road, do me a favor and become a follower to my courses. Go jump over to the nomad experiment dot com. Check out some stuff over there, especially if you're interested in learning how to travel a little bit more. You can see how implementing some of my own templates and yeah, we'll catch on the flip side and I'll see you in the next course peace.
Jason R., Design | Video | Travel | Nerd
