• Women’s Aid Look At Me
Agency: WCRS London
Gold Lion
—This digital billboard uses facial recognition to recognize when people are paying attention to the image of a bruised woman. As more people looked at the ad, her bruises and cuts healed faster, communicating the benefit of not turning a blind eye to the problem.
• News UK/Sunday Times
Elton, Branson, Cowell
Agency: Grey London
Gold Lion
—Elton John, Richard Branson and Simon Cowell are fat cats indeed in these ads promoting the British newspaper’s “Rich List.”
One of the hardest things in the design world is the critique. Critiques are a vital part of designing, as it is a great way to get feedback on your work before it is sent off into the world. The difficult part about critiques, is emotion gets involved. I work in a place where critiques are brought up on a daily basis, sometimes we forget and let emotions become involved and it becomes more of a “I like this better…” or “I don’t like this…” while it’s good to know what people like and what they don’t like, it isn’t very helpful and can be detrimental to the project. Critiques need to be helpful, and without emotion, we can’t take critiques personally, just as much as we can’t critique personally, it’s way to easy to get upset and let our emotions ruin what we’ve worked so hard on. Early on in my design career, I was always reminding myself “Nick, you need to have thick skin” but it was so hard when I felt like everyone hated my work! How was I supposed to become a better designer if it feels like nobody likes what I’m doing? I have since realized that for the most part, people were giving me critiques on my design and illustrations, and they weren’t meaning to hurt my feelings, but more than anything, they were just trying to help.
Newspaper ads, despite being the oldest form of print advertising, are still an effective way to reach a large audience. However, you need to make sure it is the right audience! Unlike the Internet which has a young demographic, the majority of newspaper readers are usually those aged 45+. Even so, you can get the best results out of your ads by requesting that they run in the sections of the newspaper which most closely relate to your target audience.
Since newspapers are divided into columns, your ads will be sized according to a predetermined formula: a certain number of columns wide and a certain number of inches long. By doing a little bit of research, you can find out the typical ad sizes for your local newspapers based on column width. It is best that you design your ad to fit correctly within the provided parameters in order to avoid any resizing issues during post-production.
Here are some tips you can keep in mind while designing your newspaper ad:
Use the bottom section of your ad as a coupon to provide an added incentive for readers to visit your location. Use the coupon to track the response rate of your ads–you’ll know how good your ads are by the number of people using the coupon.
Add a URL to your print ad to drive people to your website. There, you can tell and sell them more and provide a printable coupon.
Give your sales rep all the information they might need well ahead of deadline so you can get a proof sheet to check all the facts before it goes to print.
When it comes to proofing, check your phone number, your URL, any percentages off, brand names, and every other detail. Get another pair of eyes to check for mistakes, too.
• Women’s Aid
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