Day 5 of 100 days of no code challenged me to learn how to use Bannerbear, a software application that allows you to create and fill visual templates using data. Immediately, I knew that this was a tool I could use elsewhere, so I gave myself a few additional days to utilize bannerbear in one of my projects.
Royal Vegas Retreat is a multi day retreat for passionate hobbyists of Japanese alternative fashion and it's surrounding subculture. The event features fashion shows, vendors from all over the world, discussion panels, and social events for j fashion enthusiasts. My partner Conner is responsible for RVR's amazing fashion shows so I have her to thank for introducing me to such a unique community of passionate hobbyists and last year I had the pleasure of coordinating their guest vendor room at their inaugural event.
(A trip to Vegas is also an excuse to take flying trapeze classes with 4th generation flyers and eat at some of the best restaurants in the country)
Moving forward, I'm working with the RVR team in a workflow and automation focused role.
One of the most important pieces of planning for an event like this is creating and scheduling social media posts and announcements for things like exciting new guests or updates about ticket sales. This kind of work can get repetitive, so I created a prototype of a tool that will let the team quickly generate images for social media by filling out a form.
I'm not a designer, and I haven't confirmed that the organizer plans to use the same assets from 2021 in the next event's branding, so I tried not to focus too hard on the design. The primary purpose of this exercise was to create a prototype for the workflow by which social media posts are generated, and the automation paths leave room for templates to be updated and additional templates created when additional designs and branding guides are shared with me in the future.
This automation works without an interface, but I'm using Glide to build this one because it turns the entire process into a mobile friendly app that volunteers and organizers can use without accessing or downloading airtable. It also offers a tremendous amount of control over what each user can see and change. I've used interface builders like softr and miniextensions for similar projects, but I chose Glide this time around because it's cost effective and has robust free and starter plans that I want to evaluate.
The social media dashboard displays a gallery view of recently submitted social posts. At the bottom, it displays a calendar view of upcoming posts.
Team members can create a new social media post by clicking on "Submit new Post", which pulls up a form that allows the team member to submit titles, assets, and copy. The end user can either upload their own image, or generate one using assets and text in the form. Selecting the option to generate an image gives the user the option to choose a specific template.
Once the form is submitted, a zapier automation is triggered to send information from airtable to bannerbear and create an image based on the information given.