Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Design to the Campaign
Remember that it
s a good idea to tie the design of your microsite
in with any other advertising that is going on in the campaign at
thesametime.Thismeansthatyouwouldwanttotakealookat
something like the television commercials or print ads and you
would want to use some design elements from them. The new
Typical Motors car is a very nice one. It
'
s extremely elegant,
refined, and generally top of the line in luxury and comfort, and
it
'
s take that slick, expen-
sive-looking background from the magazine ad and incorporate it
into the site. And let
'
s being advertised as such offline. So let
'
Inside Advertising
s take the smooth, elegant, classical track
from the television commercial to use as background music on
the site.
A lot of times when you build a microsite, you
'
It
s very common to use
materials online that were
originally created for
offline production.
Essentially anything that
was created for print,
television, radio, or
outdoors (billboards, and
so on) can be used in one
form or another in your
online campaign efforts.
'
'
ll also build ban-
ners to go with it. You
ve probably guessed that the banners are
intended to drive traffic to the microsite and that
'
'
sexactlywhat
they
ll do. In addition to the banners, there should also be a piece
on the client
'
s main Web site that promotes and drives even more
traffic to the new microsite.
Microsites are usually highly amusing projects and you generally
have more creative freedom with them than you do with banners.
This is the place where you
'
ll have more opportunities to code
some new effects or try out that cool new feature that
'
'
sonlyavail-
able in the newest version of the Flash Player.
TIP
Ifyouknowthatyouaregoingtobeworkingonamicrositefora
client, try to get approval to publish out to the latest version of the
Flash Player. If they won
t agree to that, ask for the next version down.
Being able to publish out to the latest version is beneficial for all parties
involved: Creative departments get to design with new features in mind,
Flash programmers get to work directly with those new features, and
clients get cutting-edge microsites that people talk about and pass
around to their friends. In addition to those benefits, you
'
ll be helping
the penetration rates of that version of the Flash Player. The quicker
the penetration rates rise, the easier it is to convince a client that it
'
'
s
safe to use.
Quality Control
Before I start with this section, I
d like to offer a quick bit of clarifi-
cation: Quality control may go by many other names such as qual-
ity assurance or quality testing. However, for consistency, I will
always refer to it as quality control within this topic. And now that
you
'
'
re aware of that piece of information, let
'
s talk about it.
