The Design Process Of Creating A $40,000 Creative Newspaper Advertisement
Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 – 9:00 pm
This semester at University I am studying ‘Design For Advertising’ and the first project we received was based around how to professionally design a creative newspaper ad. I am going to go through the process I used to create one along with some tips on the way.
The Brief
In short, we were to design a creative newspaper advertisement / campaign for the factitious chocolate company sweets2u.com and the purpose of the campaign was to create awareness of the new and exciting chocolate delivery dot-com.
The sweets2u service is based on chocolates arriving the next day anywhere in the country, along with a personalised message printed on a personally selected decorative card.
We were asked to find an interesting way to advertise this service to the nation.
We were given no other information (not even a budget) and we had to find out what would be the best way to raise awareness of this new business so this meant we had to research the size, the number and where to place the advertisements.
Research
Where to advertise?
Before we even began on trying to come up with an idea we had to try to figure out the best place to advertise in a newspaper and for the best price that would be within the budget of this dot-com company. We researched newspaper demographics, prices, sizes and distribution numbers and finally came down to choosing to advertise in the Weekend Australian newspaper.
We chose this paper because it suited our target market of high socio-economic business people, mainly 25-60 year olds who would be more likely to send chocolate via the internet and had the money to do so.
What size to advertise?
After knowing what paper to advertise in, we had to choose the size and where to advertise in the paper and also compare prices with other newspapers. We did this by looking at newspaper advertising rate charts and by making calls to the advertising departments which proved to be a lot easier than working it out ourselves from the website rate chart. We had to take into considerations things such as colour loading (30% more to use colour) and what side of the paper to put the ad on which some papers charged more for.
We finally chose to advertise on page 3, on the bottom right side of the paper which you can see in the diagram to the right. The actual size was 20cm by 10 columns which is 20cm X 37.6cm in this particular paper. The cost for this would be AUD$40,368 inc GST for a full colour ad and that would be distributed to 305,000+ people.
What is the Unique Selling Point (USP)?
After we had decided on what paper and size to use, we could now begin creating an ad. The easiest way to sell a product is to find a unique selling point and after a bit of brainstorming and discussion we came down to these USPs for sweets2u.com; They delivered chocolate conveniently via the use of the internet and they offered personalised messages, something that you don’t get when you buy chocolate any other way. These were the USPs we focused on.
Brainstorming
After choosing the USP’s I brainstormed ideas of which you can see one of my very messy mind maps below. I generally go pretty crazy with these things and jot down as many words that come to mind within a space of about 5 minutes - this is just a method that works with me. There are many other methods on how to be creative.
After I brainstormed, I did many rough (emphasise on the rough) sketches and came up with about 70 different ideas. Below you can see a few based around the same ‘Chocolate Delivered’ theme.
I didn’t think the ‘chocolate being delivered’ theme was working too well as the ideas were too basic so I then started thinking about ideas on the USP of the service being personalised. I came up with quite a few ideas however the one idea that I ended up using actually came to me while I was trying to get to sleep… is anyone else like that?
Execution
After I had the idea firmly envisioned in my head I finally started on the execution of the ad. Below you can see my original rough (again, rough being emphasised) sketch of the proposed ad. It depicts a pair of briefs, chocolate and socks hanging on a clothes line with the tag line “Very Personal”.
The body copy underneath will read;
Choosing a present is never easy but don’t resort to socks or undies this time, instead let us do the work for you.
We will deliver chocolate anywhere in Australia overnight guaranteed…
…all you need to do is log onto www.sweets2u.com and write a personalised message to go with it! You don’t even have to leave your house.
I then went down to the shops bought some chocolate (mmm) came back, grabbed my camera, some of my undies (sorry you had to see them) and socks and went outside, pegged up the items on the clothes line and shot my scene. I experimented with different shots, combinations and lighting and after about 50 shots came back and reviewed them. You can see 4 variations below and the chosen image below it.
After choosing the shot above, I clipped out the background to simplify the scene.
I then added a nice blue cloudy background to set the scene a bit more.
I then played around with the text, body copy and positioning logo until I was happy. Below you can see the final design - you will have to click on it to be able to read the body copy. The fonts I used were Franklin Gothic Demi for the body copy and Salamander for the heading. (If you have read the post 30 fonts graphic designers must know and own you would know that the font Franklin Gothic is great for newspapers!)
And upon completing the advertisement I got to eat the chocolate! It was a sweet reward.
Mistakes To Avoid When Designing For Newspapers
Here are some mistakes to avoid when designing for newspapers along with some other tips.
Too much clutter – Don’t forget the importance of white space. If you can’t fit in all the information you had hoped to, consider going with a larger sized ad, or editing down your information to a more manageable amount or get creative… how can you say your whole message in just a few words or a picture?
Unclear message – Make sure you know what you are trying to get your reader to do before you start to design your ad. Keep this objective in mind at all times and review your ad when you are done to make sure this has been accomplished.
Errors – Even though it may seem easy to proofread such a small set of type, sometimes errors show up and are glossed over no matter how many times you read it. To be safe, have someone else review your ad for you also… this goes with almost all graphic design work. This is actually one of the top 15 mistakes designers make.
Lack of contact information – This common error is particularly frustrating for readers. You may have convinced your reader to contact you or purchase your products, but if they can’t easily find contact information, they will probably not bother to look much further. Always have a call to action.
AIDA - Try to remember this acronym… AIDA. Attention, Information, Desire, Action. Get the consumers attention, give them the information and desire for your product, then give them a call to action.
One More Tip - Another thing I noticed while researching effective newspaper ads was that any ad that had a solid block of colour as its background (with a lot of white space) really grabbed your attention straight away… you couldn’t turn the page without looking at it. This was one of the reasons I simplified my advertisement by removing the white background and adding the blue sky.
On another note, if you like creative advertising, you must check out out this list of 192 creative advertisements.
Hope you enjoyed reading through my design process and as always, constructive criticism is welcome, as well as any comments or questions. How was my copy writing? Could I improve on it?
Don’t Read This If You Do Not Want More Email
Written by Jacob Cass on Sunday, August 10, 2008 – 9:00 pm
Over the past few weeks I have been trialling having contact forms on all the main pages of my site and boy has it increased the amount of emails I have received, not only from potential clients, but also from people just wanting to say thank you or a friendly hello, and let’s face it, who doesn’t like hearing compliments?
So I ask, why should we have only one contact page? There are so many more benefits from having more than one contact page;
- Potential clients have an easier way to contact you.
- You get more email. (Good or a bad thing, that is for you to decide.)
- More clients mean more money.
- Less clicks for the user to find your contact details.
- People that may not have went the extra click will now more likely contact you.
What pages should you put contact forms on?
You should look at your site statistics to see what page/s are your most popular and you also must take into consideration what the page is for, for instance you may not want a form on your ‘Featured Articles’ Page as it is not appropriate.
Where to place each form will vary from blog to blog but personally I put them on my five main pages which are my About Page, my Hire Me Page, my Design Portfolio page, my Contact Page, and my Testimonials page.
You will also notice on my contact page I use a standard form however on my hire page I ask questions about budget, deadlines, etc that relate to my profession.
How do I get a contact form?
I personally use a Wordpress Plugin called Cforms which is great however there are many more out there! With Cforms you can customise a variety of forms very easily and then easily place them onto any page with a click of a button.
Track What Pages People Contact You From
With the Cforms plugin (and most others) each email you receive looks like the screenshot above. It will tell you exactly what page the form has been sent from along with other details such as the date and IP address of the sender. You will notice the email above has been sent from my testimonials page along with the answers to each question. This is very useful as you can see what pages people are sending the most emails from.
So… why have just one contact page?
192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements
Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 – 9:00 amHere are 192 of the best creative, smart and clever advertising messages that I have found across the web in recent times. They have used some great techniques and ideas in all of these ads and I think they are brilliant!
You may also be interested in:
FREE Month of Advertising for All
Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, May 19, 2008 – 6:39 pm
As many of you know I am about to leave to go on holiday around Europe (want to guest write?) and this means that I will not be able to manage my advertising side bar. What does this mean for you?
If you buy one month of advertising, you get one month free! The deal is if you buy one month of advertising any time from today, your ad will stay there until July 21st! Click here to check prices and order.
Oh and for the continued support of my current sponsors I am giving them a bonus 2 months free advertising over the period that I am away. Maybe new advertisers could get a surprise like that some time in the future?
Why Advertise?
Apart from getting double the value, here are some more reasons why you should advertise.
- All money made from advertising goes straight back into Just Creative Design and is not profit. This will help JCD grow and get more exposure.
- With the cash I also plan to enter my work into design books and have recently just submitted some work into Wolda’s Logo Design Annual - Entries close 20th May so be quick!
- Cash also helps to pay server costs - Last month you guys used 200gb of bandwidth!
- Over the past 40 days we have received 200,000 unique visitors.
- We receive huge weekly spikes in traffic from Social Media Sites (ie. 10,000’s of unique visitors per week)
- We receive an average of 2500 daily regular unique visitors.
- We receive an average of 10 000 page views per day.
- We receive an average of 4 page views, per visitor.
- We are ranked 9,347 on Technorati.
- We have a traffic rank of 62,540 on Alexia.
- Our main traffic comes from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia.
Click here to check prices and order!
FUNNY Graphic Design Jokes and Humour
Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 11:23 am 
Below is a list of the most humorous video clips, pictures, jokes and parodies from around the world wide web, with most of the list being courtesy of AllGraphicDesign and the rest being added myself.
My favourite ones have a smiley face
Funny Graphic Design Videos
Original Design Gangsta’ - Great Rap Video
John Stossel 20/20 - Short & Sweet Humerous Clip
Enter The Serif - An Asian fight between Serif & Sans Serif.
Make My Logo Bigger - Parody of clients asking for their work to be the way they want.
Trust Your Graphic Designer - The Graphic Avenger - A video parody.
South Park - Mac vs. Pc - Computer Commercial
PC vs Mac Spoof - Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs
Holiday Photoshop Advert - A very humerous photoshop.
How Not To Use Powerpoint - A parody of how people use Powerpoint in the wrong way.
Humourous Graphic Design Jokes & Parodies
8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad
As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists. So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.
Graphic Designer’s Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In
The aesthetic judgment of Paul Gaskill, a graphic designer working on a brochure for Valley View Apartments, was “severely clouded” by a desire to use a new Adobe Photoshop plug-in, coworkers at Blue Moon Design said Monday.
Hillarious Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine Front Page Graphic Design Error
This really ‘rights’ itself. The major magazine of Fort Smith, Arkansas’s partners in education issue that just came out has the following front page. Partners in Education help our local public schools educate (indoctrinate) our children often working with an elementary school or other individual school. Try to find the huge typo.
25 Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer
A list of signs that you might be a hardcore designer. A lot of these signs can overlap other professions too. From my experience, the following list contains mostly truths, mixed in with a little humor.
Another You Know You are a Graphic Designer When
Another list of ways to know that you are a graphic designer
You Know You’re a Graphic Designer When
A list of ways you know that you are a graphic designer.
Mac / PC Commercial Parodies
A Parody of the well known Mac / PC commercials.
You Know You’re a Font Fanatic If
A top 42 list for font fanatics.
The UnSpoken Rules of Graphic Design
37 funny rules for being a graphic designer.
The Patron Saints of Graphic Design
A humorous and beautiful page about the unknown saints of Graphic Design.
The Way Graphic Designers Used to Work
Pictures of the tedious way graphic design and layout used to work. Not funny, but put a smile on my face because I’m so happy that things aren’t like this anymore.
Ad-Agency Print Buyer Can’t Believe They Want To Add A Perf This Late In The Game
A fake news story by The Onion.
Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys
A fake news story by the Onion
Indexed
Makes fun of his life as a graphic designer.
Pay attention, professionals –or not- in Communication, Marketing and Advertising. These things happen almost every day; sometimes we don’t even notice them. But they’re here to stay. They are verbatims. And yes, they’re REAL.
Murphy’s Graphic Design Laws
A cute set of laws for graphic designers.
This is What Happens When Your Dad is a Graphic Designer
Look to see what this baby’s dad does to her pictures. Cute.
Worst Company URLs
Want a laugh? Look at these web site URLs that spell things a bit different than what the owner was hoping.
Logo Design Humour
Redesigned Logos 2.0
Redesigned Logos in Web 2.0 Format
Listen to the song made for logo designers.
Hmmm…some of these logos are um…just look for yourself.
Flickr Photos Tagged with yay2dot0logoparody
Well known logos redesigned for web 2.0 for fun.
Logos designed for terrorists
Web 2.0 sites are all the rage and if you’re lucky enough to be bought out by Google or Yahoo there are millions of dollars to be made, but how do you fake it as a Web 2.0 site? Well, all Web 2.0 sites have one thing in common … they look the part.
Like fake google logos?
KFC’s Logo First to be Seen From Space
KFC Created a logo to be seen from space. Not that funny but still cool.
Gasp, this is the worst and most shocking logo ever.
Here are some funny rejected holiday logos.
Logo design gone wrong.
Really seems like it is a joke, but this logo is for real.
Corporation’s New Logo Changes Everything
A fake news story by The Onion.
Font humour
Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes via e-mail, IM, and low-rent ValPak ads. Here, LMNOP presents the seven worst fonts–and the people who use them.
During a late night online conversation with another black, white, and orange website fan, it was decided that certain fonts should be retired. They’ve had a good run, but some things must come to an end. Whether, by overuse, obscurity, or just plain ugliness, here are some that just don’t make the cut.
Extra-Slanty Italics Introduced For Extremely Important Words
A fake news story by The Onion
DT&G Typography: Ask Yourself How it Will Read
Choose font and kerning well.
Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys
A fake parody news story by The Onion.
A List of Design and Fonts Jokes
Another list of design jokes and fonts jokes
A parody of the song, ‘Baby Got Back’
Alpha-Bits Now Available In Serif Font
A fake parody news story by The Onion.
Another fake news story by The Onion
These are cheesy jokes, but enjoy anyway.
Even cheesier fonts joke than the one above it.
You Know You Are a Fontaholic When…
Much of the following has been ‘floating around’ the USENET comp.fonts list for a couple of years.
Your Monkey Called - White and Sajak on Fonts
Not really so funny, but cute.
Adobe Photoshop Jokes & Humour
A fake news story by The Onion.
It all started with this, the hilarious Marquis de Sade picture, which was made in a flash of inspiration at work, one day. Within minutes of sending it to friends, jpegs started coming in thick and fast, as everyone began jumping on the comedy bandwagon. T
You Know You’re Addicted to Photoshop When
A list of ways to know that you are addicted to Photoshop
Photoshop Thread on Fark
A comic of what Leonardo Da Vinci Would have Been Doing if he had access to Photoshop
Acquired Paint Shop Pro Syndrome
The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta today announced the identification of a new disease.
Jokes for freelance designers
Difference Between Freelance Designers & Onsite Designers
The difference between working in-house and freelance…
This smart entrepreneur thought of this great idea, putting cartoons on the back of business cards to be remembered. They are called ‘blog cards’ and some of the cartoons are funny…and if you ask me, a great idea for freelancers.
Printers Humour
A very funny document giving advice on printers that will just make things much worse.
Have any of you ever reacted this way?
Cute Xerox commercial
A picture that will make you smile.
Hope you enjoyed the list, there is many hours worth of humour here so don’t view it all at once 
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