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Building Ads: Two examples of an ad
Self-taught Newspaper Advertising
You should know that I am not especially
gifted with creative abilities. I have no formal education or
training in art, design, or any other graphics field. But I
work from a basic understanding of what I'm doing when I'm building
an ad. I am drawing attention to a product, a service, a sale
or other important event. With that in mind, I have learned
a few things through trial and error.
Here are two examples of a newspaper ad,
as I might build it today for any client.
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I built the above ad from scratch,
including the search for a sofa, which was then transformed into
a rendered image, creating the background color shapes and
schemes, making up the business name, address and phone numbers,
in about an hour. Notice the use of large and bold type,
shapes and arrangement of parts of the ad to create
balance and to make it easy for readers to get the message. |
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This is basically the same ad, set
up for black ink only. I use shades of gray in various
patterns to create some illusion of depth, making the ad look
more interesting and (hopefully) more appealing. Stark
contrasts between bold white and dark grays help make everything
clear.
Both ads were created in CorelDraw.
The bitmap images (of sofa and completed ads) were worked on in
Corel PhotoPaint (included with CorelDraw) and Adobe PhotoShop.
Thrift Store Seminars
For more ideas, I suggest you spend
some time looking through newspapers and magazines, picking out
the ads that appeal to you — and also those that seem to miss
the mark. Keep a collection of ads that you feel do a good
job of telling readers what they need to know, and a few of
those that wasted someone's advertising dollars.
Sometimes, even today, I go to a
local secondhand or thrift store and buy old magazines, just so
I can cut out the ads that really stand out to me. Study
what works, and also try to learn from the ads that don't work.
You will save yourself wasted time, and save your clients wasted
money. |
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