AR Filters can seem a bit daunting at first sight. Having created a number of AR Filters for artists from around the world, we have some tips and tricks that we think would be useful to share with you. We’ll be guiding you through from the testing stage, to how to keep your timeline in good shape, deciding on a budget and how to set your key objectives. 

After putting all these together and expanding your knowledge on platforms such as Spark AR, you’ll be a whiz in AR filters in no time at all! 

TEST

TEST TEST TEST! We cannot stress this enough! Before pushing anything live, you need to test your filter on every device you can get your hands on, both Android and Apple. You should also be testing to see whether your filter successfully works on all genders and skin tones. By testing on multiple devices and willing volunteers, you’ll be able to refine and edit the filter to ensure it’s available to everyone before it goes live. 

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TIME 

Your timeline will need to be flexible as AR filters like to take up to a few days to be either approved or rejected and this is out of your control. If your AR filter does get rejected, you’ll have to go back to the drawing board and redesign before sending it out again to get approved. 

For further information on approvals, we recommend reading both Spark AR’s Review Policies, and their article on Publishing Effects. Reading these will save you a lot of time and will help to make sure your AR filter gets approved.‍

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BUDGET

You really don't need an outrageous budget to create an AR filter that will be effective for your campaign, nor does it define how your AR filter will turn out. Someone with sound knowledge of a computer will be able to figure AR filters out. We found this YouTube tutorial to be extremely helpful and relatively simple to get started with when creating your AR filter. 
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OBJECTIVES

Know your objectives! - this will lead your creative ideation. 

Eg. we want to activate "band x" core fans to advocate and raise awareness for their new single. A solution here would be to create an AR filter that is highly interactive and adds significant value to their core audience. 

You need to know whether you want to focus your filter on brand awareness, conversions or engagement. Who your audience is, the tone of your filter (this is how you want your audience to feel while interacting with the filter), the call to action and what your promotion strategy would be for the AR filter.

As there aren’t many in-app tutorials on Spark AR, I have found that joining this Facebook group, ‘Spark AR Community’, to be  really helpful. They have a lot of great tips and tricks to help you out and you can also share your filters with the group to get advice. 

Interested in implementing an AR filter for your next release? Get in touch here!