One third nerd, two thirds creative

Two or three years ago I was tasked with creating a web banner to promote a certain brand of raincoats and umbrellas, …to a target audience in Bangalore. It’s a long story. Don’t ask. Just know the important details: raincoats and Bangalore.

I had about 5 hours to complete the project, and my initial reaction to the idea was bewilderment and confusion.

The rain gear were big sellers in Bangalore, especially at the beginning of the rainy season, or so I was told. All that was supplied were a few images of the merchandise:

The first thought was to blow something out, quickly, and get this banner over with. But I’d been doing too much of that at the time, and wanted to try and make something to be proud of. It’s nice to have a project like that, at least once a month. Otherwise, we all might as well be laying out quick-n-dirty ads for the yellow pages.

Instead of just placing the merchandise on the banner along with a short phrase or sentence, I could try and include relevant imagery that a guy in Bangalore could identify with. So, find some Bangalore photos. We all have our sources for imagery:

Again though, raincoats. Monsoon Season. I couldn’t find any rainy-day photos that someone in Bangalore would conceivably recognize. So, maybe I could apply some fake rain:

Only one of the images seemed to show the rain droplets the clearest. So I dumped the other two, and then stretched and lens-blurred the right side of the third image to allow a good spot for the product shots:

Then for a finishing touch, place a short phrase about monsoon season in the appropriate language, and apply a few stylized enhancements:

…definitely one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever worked on.