12th Grade — Design for Social Media: School Announcements & Promotion

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Scroll through a school or club's social media. What makes one post stop your scroll and another get skipped?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we adapt our design skills to create effective social media graphics for the school?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Identify size/format requirements for common social media platforms.
Design a social media graphic promoting a real school event.
Apply consistent branding across a 2-3 post series.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with Photoshop, Canva, or Figma
A real upcoming school event to promote

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Planning & First Graphic

Do Now (5 min, above).
Mini-lesson (12 min): social media graphic sizes/formats, and what makes a post stop the scroll. Independent build, part 1 (23 min): design the first graphic in a series promoting a real school event.
Save progress (5 min).

Day 2: Completing the Series

Do Now (5 min). Independent build, part 2 (30 min): complete a 2-3 post series with consistent branding.
Share (10 min).

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Social Media Graphic: A design sized and formatted specifically for a social platform (e.g. an Instagram post or story).
Post Series: A set of related posts sharing consistent branding, used to promote one event or message over time.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Post series scored with a rubric: correct platform sizing, consistent branding, clear event information.

Exit Ticket: What did you keep consistent across your post series, and why does that matter?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress yearbook (or, later, studio) work to your portfolio with a 1-2 sentence caption -- and once you're in the Design Studio phase, a photo of the piece in its real, installed location if possible. This is the same evidence trail you'll use for Archive & Portfolio and any PBAT/portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Design for Social Media: School Announcements & Promotion.” This project asked: “How do we adapt our design skills to create effective social media graphics for the school?” I used Social Media Graphic by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: A direct Business/Marketing class topic — social media strategy and audience engagement.

Career Connection: This exact lesson is a named project on the Advertising & Marketing career page.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Design and actually post a real announcement campaign (three or more platforms/formats) for a real school event. Start here: check which platforms the school's existing accounts actually use and get real engagement on before designing anything for a platform nobody checks.
Track real engagement on your posts and write a short analysis of what worked and what you'd change. Start here: screenshot your post's like/view/share counts the day after posting, before writing any analysis.