Prince – Purple Rain Tribute in Theaters and on Social Media
Thirty-two years later, Purple Rain is back in theaters for a one-week tribute to Prince
Tower Theatre in Sacramento, CA, showed Purple Rain tonight, April 25, 2016, to pay tribute to Prince (who died April 21, 2016).
When I first heard the news of Prince’s death I was shocked. Then super bummed! I’ve been a fan since hearing his Controversy album when I was in high school. Then a flood of great memories came rushing back of watching Purple Rain with my then-girlfriend, Mao, at the movies when it first came out in 1984. And after the movie, we drove to Tower Records on Watt Ave in Sacramento and bought the Purple Rain album (on vinyl). I still have it.
In 2016, we all live – and pay tribute – on social media
The next thought that rushed forward was pay tribute to Prince on social media. I Tweeted RIP text with the hashtag #RIPPrince; posted RIP text on Facebook; and added an RIP Prince Snap to my SnapChat Story. Then… Instagram.
Thinking of paying tribute to Prince on Instagram made me instantly think of Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice in his book, “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook“: each platform requires a unique image size.
Opened up my Canva.com account and created an Instagram-sized image (followed by Twitter and Facebook-sized images). I love Canva.com because it has pre-sized templates for all social media platforms. I found an image with a violet/purple/grape-color overlay and got going. As a former dancer and popping/break dance instructor from the 80s, one Prince song in particular has ALWAYS stood out for me: D.M.S.R. (heck, the whole 1999 album is a dance party!) And my social media image tribute was born:
DMSR will forever be the dance song for me. RIP PRINCE
We definitely live in a mobile-first world
After I posted the first round of designs, I looked at them on my phone – and they looked like crap! So I went back to Canva.com and re-designed all of the images with “mobile legibility” in mind.
Instagram (with Earlybird filter):
Facebook:
Twitter:
