ADVERTISING SKETCHBOOK

These are some ads I’ve been working on this week. I try to keep a design sketchbook for ad ideas.

This is an idea for a generic ad. The goal is to sell the gallery using a simple repeated image. In this case it is one of my photos of one of my Adel Rootstein mannequins. The mannequin collection is a feature in the gallery. I think of them as contemporary sculpture.

A large part of my job as a gallerista is designing ads for local magazines and newspapers and  I spend a lot of time studying ads in local and national periodicals to see which ones please me, and why.

This sketch uses an image from Nakki Goranin's upcoming American Photobooth exhibit (February + March at PSAW) I wanted to see if I could use several different images and two different typefaces and still maintain the smooth look that I like. The background multiple is the back of a Jello booklet, the foreground is the Photobooth image. I imagine that they existed in the same historical era. This sketch was fun to do but it's unlikely that I will ever use it. Too fussy, ultimately.

 There’s a lot of optical competition in most periodicals, which so often look like the designer shook up everything up dumped it on the page willy nilly.  Bad overall layout is so commonplace that often the hardest part for me is compensating for having to be part of the mixup.   The challenge is to design something that will stand out. Simplicity works. I like to have the image do the heavy lifting, with text acting as a design element . I prefer to have as little text as I can get away with.

   
The problem I see with most local ads, and a lot of national ones, is that they are a jumble of competing typfaces with no overall sense of composition. It’s hard enough to make people’s eyes rest on a particular ad when there’s so much visual noise surrounding it. When the reader’s eye does lite on an ad, it shouldn’t be a struggle to figure out what the ad is selling.

Another generic. It incorporates an illustration from a children's reader that I picked up in Holland many years ago. This illustration is typical of the kind in my collections and my limited edition reproductions. It was published in 1955, but it must be  a reprint of an earlier version. It must be. But I don't read Dutch, so I can't tell. The book is called VIJFDE LEESBOEKJE, and the illustration is by  C. Jetses. I gave the illustration a  red header, a black border, and added the arrows because they amuse me, add some graphic humor, and point out the physical address and the gallery website.

I did this a couple of months ago and although I've never used it as a print ad, I have used it on the homepage of the Gallery Website several times, and I'm very fond of it. It took me ages to get just the right combination of images, and to scale them properly. The image on the left is one of my photographs from Shipyard Archeology, a series I did a few years ago. The image on the right is from Paint By Number painting, part of the collection that was on exhibit last August here at PSAW.

My ideal ad. Volkswagen, 1964. It just doesn't get better than this.

Comments

[eb]

my vote goes to image #3...

and in response to your comment - the pens and a real hands on is so relaxing after the keyboard and monitor - for me...

such lovely temps today - hope you were enjoying the 50 degrees...

xox - eb.

[Maggie Jochild]

I LOVE the Dutch bicyclist. I seriously considered moving to the Netherlands for a while after my mother died. (And here I'll sidestep all the jokes about putting fingers in dikes.)

My problem is that I'm waaaay more drawn to verbiage than the visual image. I'll read text two or three times, however small or messy, before I take in the graphic. Which I think makes me somewhat immune to advertising (except during the Olympics, those commercials on TV put my emotions through a Waring blender) and made me a godawful maker of political flyers back in the day.

But Liza, I find your stuff compelling. I think because of the balance (thrill and equilibrium). (Thrill is such a great word -- from Old English thirlen, meaning to pierce, from even older thyrel, meaning hole.)

In other news, I saw ya'll had a record high yesterday in Burlington at 61 degrees. Nutty. It's been into the 70s here for several days. Some folks are saying they think the warm weather played a role in the NH primary results, although I've yet to hear a coherent reason why that would be the case. Anyhow, the race is on now, for sure.

[lotusgreen]

i like the bicyclist too!

and for some reason i keep seeing the A in Art in the first one as a deep magenta!

[liza cowan]

Maggie, I think that some people are more sensitive or aware of words, some of visuals, some of kinesthetics, and you must be more verbal, as you say. Possibly you are more drawn to the written word, or maybe you experience words more auditorily.

I love written words, but if the typefaces are not pleasing or the print is too small, or if the background color and the typeface color are not harmonious, I will be totally distracted. I'm not saying this is a good thing.

I think it's probably a good thing to learn to pay attention to all channels of information because, at least on a subliminal level, they are always affecting us to varying degrees.

Lotus, I think the PSAW letters in the cyclist ad are black, but I'll have to check on the original design. I can't remember now. It was yesterday and I have a mind like a sieve. Sometimes I pick up a color from the image to use for for the text. Monitors really make a difference. Also, as you know, colors change when depending on what colors are next to them.

I looked at this site on my daughter's computer and the blacks were all a bluish brown. There's a way to calibrate the monitor color resolutions, but I don't know how.

This is always an issue with print too. My computer registers colors in a way that's quite different from our local newspapers' and the colors in my ads come out rather different from how I designed them.

Deep orange can become muddy brown. Yikes!!

Thrills, chills and peppermint pills to both of you.

[Alison Bechdel]

Hey, Liza. Groovy sketches. Can't wait to see the Photobooth show.

And nice piece in 7 Days about this blog. (tried to post a link but wasn't allowed.)