A productivity script and Photoshop template for generating banners for Virgin Media’s TV Go platform.

“AB Spots Template” demo

Background

There were 2 challenges with this project: to design a template in the house style that would fit the artwork into the various product builds, and to create a workflow that a non-designer could use to format the files.

Unusually, the A Spot banners had single source images for both portrait and landscape layouts. As a consequence large parts of the banner got cropped off with only small ‘safe area’ in the middle. So the template had to be constructed with care where the artworker could see a preview on various devices while they adjusted the banner.

The companion script makes export more efficient and saves the user from having to name the files.


Analysis and Solutions document for TV Go banners (click to open PDF)

Features

  • Time-saving Smart Objects. Only a master element needs to be changed to update all repeated elements on the artboards.
  • Real time preview of how the banners will look on multiple devices.
  • Script warns if the Photoshop template isn’t open.
  • Script efficiently exports the required artboards and names the files with the show title and current date.
  • UI design, coding: Ryan Gilmore