🎯 OVERVIEW
This project was probably one of the most challenging, but ultimately most awarding to design. Charles Farris, the owner of Farris Law Firm↗, was looking for bus shelter posters as their first venture into OOH advertising.
initial concept. bottle generated with adobe firefly
🔄 FIRST DRAFT
At the time I started this project, I’d already seen plenty of lawyer ads while working at Outfront—most of them leaned so hard into professionalism that they ended up feeling a bit...boring. Since the Farris Firm was new to the OOH space and didn’t have much existing branding, I saw a great opportunity to create something that still felt professional, but brought in a sense of humor to help it stand out.
My first concept—“Don’t DIY your DUI case”—actually came out of a fun brainstorm with the Creative Team. It worked well as a one-off, but I quickly realized it didn’t scale well into a full campaign. There just weren’t enough variations that could work across multiple bus shelter ads. So I pivoted to a broader idea: “DIY your ___, not court.” That gave me a flexible, repeatable structure to build a cohesive campaign with variety and consistency.
second drafts
💬 FEEDBACK
I presented the drafts above to the whole LA Creative team. Though they liked the catchy copylines and the scalability of the campaign, they critiqued that the visuals lacked depth. They pushed me to go further with less use of Adobe Firefly, which I had been using for a lot of projects before this.
final designs
🤔 WHAT I LEARNED
I presented the drafts above to the full LA Creative team. They were into the catchy copylines and liked how scalable the campaign concept was, but they also gave me valuable critique: the visuals needed more depth. They encouraged me to push past my usual process and rely less on Adobe Firefly, which I had been using pretty heavily in earlier projects.
While the “DIY a Cake” icing text was still generated with Firefly, I shifted my focus for the paint poster—this time building it entirely with Photoshop brushes and blend modes. I also taught myself how to mask tricky elements like sprinkles, which was definitely tedious but added a lot of visual interest and realism.
In the end, the extra effort paid off. The client loved the final concept so much that they asked to purchase the rights and PSD files—a huge win for the team, and especially me as an intern.
