Makeover Monday: Shot at Love

Okay, hockey fans, tonight's Makeover Monday is yet another hockey romance writer, Melody Heck Gatto. She sent me this teaser and told me that she loves the photograph, but the teaser is too dark. Once I started working on it, I could see the problems the original designer had: the photo is cute but there's too much happening—brick sidewalk, buildings, cars. It's tough to put text anywhere.

Before

Something's got to give. The photo is cute, so we'll keep that. Who doesn't love a lifted-foot-while-kissing? Maybe anyone who is trying to walk behind the couple, but pshaw on those unromantic pedestrians. 

Always try to integrate the text and photo. To me, the best parts of the photo are the kiss and the lifted foot. But to really highlight those, we'll have to cut some of the words, because we can't fit all those words on a detailed, narrow photo.

Now for this graphic, I went to PicMonkey because I get their newsletter and I saw that they had a new feature for curving text which fit my idea. I curved the text to highlight the woman's lifted foot. Then I paralleled the curve with the author's name and voilá, I was ready to save. 

Not so fast, Mel. PicMonkey has a new system. Now you have to join up for a free one week trial to save or print, and that includes your financial info. So, for all you cheapies out there (like me) no matter how awesome the text features may be, there are no more free rides. Not that I blame them, what can you get for free these days? Other than my design advice, that is.

After

Here's my design on PicMonkey. Ask me no questions about how I managed to save it, but the answer might rhyme with bean bot.

But this photo size is not optimized for Facebook or Twitter. So, back to Canva I went. I opened up a Facebook Post graphic, then inserted a slightly textured background and matched the colour to this photo. Then I plunked the photo on top, added the text and title, and here we go. A lot of teasers take advantage of a plain sidebar for their text. It certainly makes it easy to read.

But I have to confess, I'm not completely happy with this makeover. In my post on choosing photos, I suggested that you should choose a photo with empty space to create a teaser. Which means no matter how much we love a photograph, we do need to think about its potential as a graphic. I searched and found a photograph with a similar feel, but lots of lovely blank space. The other thing I did was to dial up the transparency of the photograph so that the letters pop more. I'll talk more about this technique next week.

I think this is the best option. While the couple is not quite as adorable, there is a perfect balance of photo/negative space/text here. It creates a graphic that's attractive and draws your eye in (due to the vanishing point in the centre.) It also includes the hockey aspect.

Ideas to steal: Try to fall in love with photos that can work best with teaser layouts.

And that's it for today's makeover. Next week, excitement in the Ting household! Mel's getting paid, you're going to see five gorgeous new teasers, and it only took a natural disaster for all this to happen.