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Module 5 • Lesson 3📣 Campaign from One Master

The Module 5 deliverable. A real brief is never one image — it's a poster, an Instagram square, a story, and a web banner, all on-brand and due together. You will build them from a single master using artboards, linked Smart Objects, and multi-size export, so the set stays consistent and updates as one.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Use artboards to hold multiple sizes in one document
  • Share art across artboards with linked Smart Objects
  • Adapt one design to portrait, square, and landscape without redrawing it
  • Export every artboard at once with Export As and presets
  • Deliver a coherent, on-brand campaign set from one file

⏱️ Estimated Time: 60 minutes

🎯 Project (Module 5 deliverable): One master file that outputs a full campaign — poster, IG square, story, and banner — all sharing type, art, and grade, all exportable in one pass.

In This Lesson

👤 The Goal: One Idea, Every Size

One campaign idea, four deliverables. On the right, the slow way: four separate files, each edited by hand, drifting out of sync. On the left, one master with four artboards fed by shared linked art — change the key art or the tagline once and all four stay identical. Drag the handle:

One master Four files
A diagram of the principle. Artboards keep every size in one place; linked art keeps them in agreement. Consistency stops being willpower and becomes structure.

🧠 Mental Model: Master & Instances

Think of one master that owns the campaign's shared truth — the key art, the logo, the tagline, the grade — and several instances (the artboards) that each present that truth at a specific size and crop. The shared elements are linked Smart Objects, so they exist once and appear everywhere; only layout and framing differ per instance.

This is the same idea as 5.1's styles and 5.2's templates, scaled up to a whole deliverable set: decide the shared things once, place them by reference, and let each size be a view onto the same source rather than a fresh copy of it.

Masterart · logo · grade Poster Square Banner each instance = a view onto the same master
Figure 1: One master, many framed instances. Update the master and every instance inherits the change; only the crop and layout are per-size.

🗂️ Artboards & Multi-Size Export

Artboards are independent canvases inside one PSD, each with its own size (there are presets for common social and ad sizes). You lay out each artboard, then File ▸ Export ▸ Export As renders every artboard to its own file in one pass — pick format, scale, and even multiple scales (1×, 2×) at once. One command, the whole set out the door.

Export As — all artboards
Artboards (4) Poster 3300×5100 IG square 1080² Story 1080×1920 Banner 1500×500 Format PNG ▾ Scale 1× 2× Export All
Figure 2: Export As renders every artboard to its own file at once. Set format and scale globally; the whole campaign exports in a single click.

⚠️ Design at the biggest size, export down

Build the key art at (or above) the largest deliverable's resolution — usually the print poster — and let smaller sizes scale down from it. Scaling a small master up for print softens everything. Biggest first, always.

↔️ Reflowing a Design to Fit

The same idea has to survive a tall story (9:16), a square, and a wide banner (3:1). Don't just squash it — re-compose. Keep the focal point and the shared elements, but let the layout breathe differently in each frame: stack elements vertically for the story, center for the square, spread horizontally for the banner.

  • Anchor the focal point (logo, hero, headline) first in each frame, then arrange the rest around it.
  • Reuse, don't recreate: the linked art and named styles come along; only position and size change.
  • Protect safe zones: keep text clear of a story's UI overlays and a banner's crop edges.

✅ One idea, three compositions

A campaign feels cohesive when every size is clearly the same idea, not literally the same crop. Recomposing per aspect ratio — while the art, type, and grade stay shared — is exactly that balance.

🛠️ Guided Build: The Campaign

Bring your key art (ideally a Module 4 composite), your 5.1 type styles, and your 5.2 linked logo.

Step 1: Set up artboards · 10 min

  1. New document, Artboard on. Add artboards from presets: a poster, IG square (1080²), story (1080×1920), banner (1500×500).
  2. Design the poster (largest) at full resolution first.

Step 2: Share the essentials · 12 min

  1. Place Linked the logo and key art into each artboard so they're the same source everywhere.
  2. Apply your Paragraph Styles to each headline/subhead so the type voice is identical across sizes.

Step 3: Recompose per size · 14 min

  1. On each artboard, anchor the focal point, then rearrange around the aspect ratio. Respect safe zones on the story and banner.
  2. Optional: put your unifying grade (Module 4) as a linked or duplicated top layer on each so color stays shared.

Step 4: Export the set · 8 min

  1. File ▸ Export ▸ Export As, select all artboards, choose format and scale, Export All.
  2. Change the tagline in the linked source and re-export to prove the whole set updates from one edit. Module 5 deliverable done. 🏆

✅ Project Completion Checklist (Module 5 deliverable)

  • ☐ One master PSD with poster, square, story, and banner artboards
  • ☐ Logo & key art placed as linked Smart Objects (shared source)
  • ☐ Type driven by the 5.1 Paragraph/Character Styles
  • ☐ Each size recomposed for its aspect ratio, safe zones respected
  • ☐ All artboards exported in one pass via Export As
  • ☐ A single source edit updates the whole set

🧗 Now You: Solo Variation

🌟 Your challenge

  1. Extend the campaign with two more sizes (a billboard and an email header) without recreating any shared element.
  2. Produce a light and a dark variant of the whole set by swapping one linked background — everything else stays put.
  3. Hand the project to a "client" (a friend): Package it, have them change the linked logo, and confirm every artboard updates on their machine.

Going further: pair this with data-driven graphics (a taste of Module 6) to spin out dozens of localized versions — same layout, different text and image per row of a data set.

🍳 Recipe Card: Campaign Set

One master, every size

  1. Artboards for each size; design the largest first
  2. Place Linked logo + key art into every artboard
  3. Apply shared Paragraph Styles for one type voice
  4. Recompose per aspect ratio; respect safe zones
  5. Export As all artboards at once (format + scale)

Mantra: share the idea, reframe the layout, export the set in one breath.

📓 Learning Journal

Add to your journal after this lesson:

  • Key concepts you learned
  • Techniques that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and feelings about learning this

✍️ This lesson's prompt: Find a brand you admire and list every place its campaign appears (feed, story, print, web). What stays identical across them, and what is recomposed? That is the master-and-instances split in the wild.

📝 Module 5 Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

  • A type system (scale + styles + grid) gives every layout one consistent voice.
  • Smart Objects protect art and, via linked files, let one source update many designs.
  • Artboards hold every size in one master; Export As ships them together.
  • Design the largest first, share the essentials, recompose per aspect ratio.

🎉 What You've Accomplished — Across All of Module 5

You have moved from making one good image to running a small production system: a named type voice (5.1), self-updating templates (5.2), and a full campaign from a single master (5.3). This is the skill set that turns a designer into a studio — consistent, fast, and scalable output that clients and teams can rely on.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

Isn't this really an Illustrator/InDesign job?

For vector-heavy branding and long documents, yes. But image-led campaigns — anything built on photography or composites — live in Photoshop, and artboards plus linked Smart Objects make it a genuinely capable production tool for that work.

How do I keep a big multi-artboard file manageable?

Lean on linked assets (keep data external), name layers and groups, and use layer color labels per artboard. If a file gets unwieldy, split shared art into its own linked PSD so each campaign file stays light.

🔭 Looking Ahead

You have systems for consistency; next you get systems for speed and volume. Module 6 — Generative + Automation, Advanced covers generative compositing, conditional Actions, and data-driven graphics that produce dozens of variations from one template.

✅ Before the Next Module

  • Ship one campaign set (4+ sizes) from a single master file.
  • Prove a one-edit update propagates across every artboard.
  • Write your Learning Journal entry.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Encouragement for the Journey

You just learned to make consistency automatic — the quiet superpower that separates a hobbyist from a studio. With the Commercial Work tier complete, only the Going Further tier remains. Next we teach Photoshop to do the repetitive work for you. Onward.