EyeMagineMedia Advert / Design Process

POSTED AT 12:51 on 29th January 2008

This post looks specifically at a quarter page print advert I designed for myself and the thinking behind the design process that made the final published advert. The nature of the advert was that it was going to be placed within January’s edition of a local magazine in the area which promotes other businesses and what is going on within the community. My purpose for the advert was mainly from a marketing point in terms of making people aware of my brand and the services I offer.

The Initial Design

The initial design was based upon existing branding that I use on all artwork I produce for myself. In using the artwork I have already produced on other designs I would be maintaining consistency, yet also I knew with the vibrant and bold colours that I use it would make my advert prominent within the page. This was important as since the advert was only quarter of a page I knew that I would be sharing the page with 3 other adverts and that therefore I would be competing with others.

The key elements that I felt needed to be used when creating the advert were the brand, the key message, the slogan and the contact details. I necessarily began by working in photoshop in order to get a general layout in place that I could build upon. Admittedly my first attempt showed that I still had alot of work that needed to be done.

Fine Tuning

Moving on from the initial design I then began to work on analysing what was there and looking to refine it.

My first thought when looking at the design was that it definitely contained too much text within it. Whilst a nicely designed advert is key to getting noticed, content is very much king. You have to consider that the audience is likely only to spend seconds glancing at the advert so getting your point across is paramount. A consideration also had to be made on the size of the advert as a quarter page advert on A5 doesn’t give much room for lengthy paragraph. From looking at my key message on the page I changed it to “2008 Time For A Change” which I felt was better as it provided a “call to action” statement instead of just being a greeting.

The next problem I had was with my slogan, as baring in mind my brand isn’t establised as opposed to something like Adidas, Coca Cola, McDonalds, etc I had added the slogan as a way of letting the audience know what I do. I worked on different variations of condensing the slogan which basically used the keywords, web, print and design. I eventually settled with web | print | design as I felt that this worked in terms of the best order and was less wordy than web design | print design.

At this stage I began to work more on the colour, size, positioning and the layout of the elements. Admittedly I left the positioning of the elements unchanged (key message, logo, slogan, contact details) as this was in terms of a hierarchy how I saw the elements in terms of importance. By creating the key message in a larger font, using a colour that produced high contrast and the fact I used capitals was the way I was going to draw the readers attention to this first. Then by decreasing the other elements in terms of size and colour this would help the eye to flow down the page.

I necessarily at this stage played around with many versions of the advert trying to get it to look right.

The Finished Advert

My final tweaks before it being published was to change the size of the key message to reflect the same size of text as the logo. By doing this I rearranged the elements to have much more room around them which would then appear more spacious and better on the eye. I also removed my email address and just displaying my web address which would be adequate for readers if they wanted to find out more or how to get in contact further.

Another tweak was to add drop shadow to 2008 within the key message. I did this specifically as at the time of it being published in 2007 people wouldn’t be used to seeing 2008. Therefore by highlighting it more it would bring the year more to the attention of the reader.

Conclusion

At this time the advert has recently been published/distributed and I feel pleased with the end result. I feel the key to producing the advert is by using good design in order to attract the readers attention whilst also using techniques to help maintain it and by being clear and concise with the content in order to give them all the information they need without having to work hard and spend lots of time on it.