Just Creative Design

The Design Process Of Creating A Creative Billboard Campaign

Published on Wednesday, December 10, 2008 – 11:30 am | 31 brilliant comments »

In this article I will guide you through the design process of creating a creative billboard campaign for a University project of mine with some tips along the way.

Below you will find the final 3 billboard designs. (A new revised billboard is at the bottom of this post based on feedback from the community.)

Tips For Outdoor Advertising

Before I get into the design process of the campaign I will share with you some tips I learnt during my research of designing for outdoor advertising.

• Product Identification - Your message / product should register quickly.
• Short Copy - Your message should be brisk and provocative.
• Legibible Type - Your message should be able to read at a distance, and while the person is moving.
• Layout - All elements of the design / campaign should come together as a single unit / package.
• Images - Your images must be big enough to capture attention / convey a meaning.
• Bold Colours - Your design should separate well from its surroundings and gain attention.
• Simple Background - The background should usually be simple so as not to interfere with the message unless of course it adds to the design / message.
• Innovative / Creative / Humorous - If you can include these traits in your design, it will go a lot further than any other message.
• Less Is More - Single minded, focused ads deliver more impact.

The Brief

Now that I have given you some tips I will guide you through my design process.

This assignment was given to me in my Design For Advertising class and the brief was to create a 6mx3m billboard campaign (3 billboards) to gain awareness of how tough living the life as a single pensioner is here in Australia.

We had unlimited creative freedom and we had to research everything ourselves including billboard sizes, best locations, prices, what being on the pension was like, statistics, etc.

Some interesting information:

• 2,750,000 people are on the Single Age Pension here in Australia
• Single pensioners receive $281 a week (works out to be $40 a day)
• Research has shown $80 more is needed per week to lead a healthy lifestyle

Mindmapping

After carrying out the research as I mentioned above I drew up a mind map, which is one of my ‘get creative‘ methods. Mind mapping is a great way to figure out word associations and a good way let your ideas run wild. While mind mapping I also draw / write down any ideas that come to mind.

Below you can see my messy mind map with some sketched ideas I had on the way.

Concept Development

After I had done a bit of mind mapping I ended up going into thumbnail sketches

In the two images below you can see some of my ideas, see if you can match up the pictures to my thoughts - it will be a challenge considering how messy my sketches are.

1. A photo of a plate with only 1 pea on it with the tag “The Pension Is Not Enough”
2. Photos of many pensioners and the tag “Adopt A Pensioner”
3. Large 65,000 number with the tag “Adopt A Pensioner Today”
4. A gravestone with ‘pensioner’ written on it.
5. A $10 note cut in half with the tag “The Pension Is Not Enough”
6. The Pension Is Not Enough (Word play)

Concept Choice

You can see above that I was playing on the catch phrase “The Pension Is Not Enough” along with different pictures (ie. a pea on a plate, an unhappy pensioner, a $10 note etc).

While I was playing around with this phrase I managed to find that I could spell the word ‘tough’ out of the other letters.

ie. The Pension Is Not Enough gets turned into The Pension Is Tough.

I immediately knew that this idea was going to work and I brainstormed further on how I could make this catch phrase work. ie. What images would work in a series, colours, etc.

Picture Choice

I ended up going with hard hitting images that would engage the viewer, making them see and feel what it is like to be a pensioner. This was achieved by two photos of sad pensioners and another photo with a hand full of shrapnel.

The images I used were stock images off the internet that I have adjusted to suit the needs of the campaign - I had to use stock images due to a lack of time. You can see the original stock images above.

Colour Choice

After I had found the right images I made the photos black & white and increased the contrast to show the emotion and reality of being on the pension. The red, black and white colour scheme was used for its ability to gain attention. Do you know your colour theory? You can find more colour resources here.

The black background was used because this is the most legible way to display text at large sizes. Find below a scan of the photocopy our teacher gave us (You can click to view it larger). Notice the one that stands out the most?

Legibility

As mentioned above the large, short message can be read easily at small and large sizes. This is achieved by the white on black colour, correct kerning, balance & spacing. See the image below which features the billboard decreasing in 25% increments - notice how the sign can still be read at small sizes?

Font Choice

I used the typeface Frutiger LT Std 75 Black for the words THE PENSION and Frutiger LT Std 65 Bold for the smaller copy. Frutiger is a great, extremely legible font for large signage and is extremely popular in advertising. Fruitger was originally designed for use in airport signage, a place where legibility is of the utmost importance.

Legibility is also of the utmost importance in billboard design because people reading the sign will be driving and will only have approximately 6-7 seconds to view & take in the message.

You can read more about fonts and where to use them in my post 30 Fonts All Designers Must Know.

Bringing It All Together

After a lot of experimentation with layout and type sizes I had completed the billboard campaign. I achieved the top of the class with this campaign but somehow still only managed to get 76/100 - the teacher is a hard marker to say the least.

Well there we have it, the design process of creating a creative billboard campaign.

Revision

Based on some of the comments below, I have slightly revised the design of which you can see one variation below.

Further Resources

Outdoor Media Association
Everything you will ever need to know about advertising outdoors in Australia. Sizes, formats, etc.

The Design Process of Creating A Billboard Design
This was another billboard design that I created at University with a walk through of the design process.

Billboardom
A blog dedicated to funny billboards & creative billboards.

15 Outstanding Billboard Designs
Some creative out of the norm billboard designs.

80 Creative, Smart & Clever Ads
A collection of clever advertisements from around the world.

As always, constructive criticism & comments are welcome.

31 comments thus far »

Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 3 - Annual Report Design

Published on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 – 1:00 am | 34 brilliant comments »

Over the past 14 weeks I have been developing a corporate identity for a new fictional beer label called Gruen. Over three articles I am outlining the process and decisions made while creating this identity.

This is part three - annual report design.

Read more »

34 comments thus far »

Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 2 - Billboard Design

Published on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 – 7:53 pm | 28 brilliant comments »

Over the past 14 weeks I have been developing a corporate identity for a new fictional beer label called Gruen. Over three articles I am outlining the process and decisions made while creating this identity.

This is part two - billboard design. “Part One - Beer Label Design” was posted last week and “Part Three - Annual Report Design” will be coming soon.

Below are the briefs of the three projects that we completed at University.

PART 1. Beer Label & Bottle Design

Pitch two beer label designs to the class > the class will vote on the best design for you to pursue > create mock ups of the chosen design.

PART 2. Creative Billboard Design

Pitch two creative billboard designs to the class based on the chosen beer from project one > the class will vote on best billboard design.

PART 3. Annual Report Design

Pitch two concepts to the class for the Gruen Brewery annual report design > the class will vote on the best annual report design.

Project 2: Creative Billboard Design

In project one, it was decided based on class votes that I would use the brown beer design rather than the green design. It was now time to move onto the next project… to create two creative billboards.

The Design Brief

You are required to produce 2 creative concepts for an advertising campaign which does not rely upon exaggeration, deception or hype. Your aim is to successfully promote Gruen Beer based on objective truth. Produce 2 advertising campaigns for a billboard design.

The campaign will have graphic consistency with the product and must include an image of the product. This may be a photo-realistic rendering or an actual photographic product shot. Each of your campaigns should take a unique approach. The class will then vote on the best design.

My Process

As I am also studying Design For Advertising this semester (just finished) and had already done a billboard design recently, this part of the process came quite naturally to me.

The main general rules to remember in billboard design is to keep the copy (text) under 7 words and to ensure the message can be understood within a few seconds… that is all the time you have to read a billboard when traveling on a road at high speeds.

Concept 1

After some brainstorming and sketching I came up with these two creative billboard concepts of which I then put together in Photoshop. The first billboard was based on the fact when you drive along in Australia, you see many ‘watch out for kangaroos’ signs. These signs usually have ‘NEXT 5km’ written underneath them… I took this concept and changed the one kangaroo to two kangaroos reflective of the Gruen Beer brand.

I then added the text “Next Pub in 5km” so that the drivers would stop at the next pub for a Gruen Beer, something that would be needed in the desert… which is subtly in the background.

You may also want to check out some more creative advertising here.

Concept 2

In this billboard I played on the ‘double’ idea again. This time I played on the fact that when you drink alcohol you get double vision and see two of one thing… which also reflects the Gruen brand of two kangaroos. I made the second beer in the billboard blurry to suggest this fact of blurred vision. The white text on the black background makes it very easy to read at a long distance, something which is essential in a billboard design.

The Verdict

90% of my classmates chose billboard number 1 which I also thought was the stronger design… it grabs your attention and makes the unfamiliar, familiar - not only that but it will make the viewer buy the product 5km down the road… which essentially is what advertising is for.

Poll:

In the next post I will outline the design process behind creating two annual report designs. Subscribe to my article feed so you don’t miss out. As always, constructive criticism and comments are welcome.

28 comments thus far »

Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 1

Published on Thursday, October 30, 2008 – 11:00 am | 63 brilliant comments »

Over the past 14 weeks I have been developing a corporate identity for a new fictional beer label called Gruen. I am going to outline the process and decisions made while creating this identity by documenting the process over three articles. This is part one.

Read more »

63 comments thus far »

How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening To Music

Published on Saturday, May 10, 2008 – 7:18 pm | 59 brilliant comments »

Music shares many common ideas and themes with the visual arts. For example, repetition, rhythm, harmony, tone, shape, space, scale, line, texture and colour are terms common to both the musical and visual language and this project was focused around these points.

In this University Project we had to listen to music, draw an abstract response then create 2 CD covers from what we heard and below is how I went about doing it… This is how to design a CD cover just by listening to music. I would advise to scroll down and look at the final designs before reading the article.

Oh and before you correct me, I actually did 3 CD covers because I enjoyed it so much instead of the 2 requested. You may have even noticed me putting them up in my portfolio last week.

Part One

The project was divided into two parts and in the first part we had to listen to 4 contrasting pieces of music. We had to take an A4 page and draw a simple visual language of what we heard. We could do this only by using the basic elements of line, shape and colour and it had to be a non representational, abstract design and we could only use the 6 spectrum colours (red orange yellow green blue purple).

We had to aim for a contrast between the drawings and let your subconscious tell you what shapes and colours represent each type of music. Kinda cool in a creepy kind of way.

Below you can see my 4 visual responses after listening to the music.

1. The first was a slow, smooth, soft, calm watery type song.
2. The second was a upbeat funky song.
3. The third was a hard rough death metal rock song and the
4. Fourth was an electronic digital sounding song.

Part Two

We then had to discuss our results with our peers… All 120 responses from 30 students were pinned to a board and compared. We then had to choose which of our own drawings provided the most contrast and you can see number 1 and number 3 had the most contrast so I used these two (I later chose to do number 4 as well). We then had to use these drawings above to develop them into CD covers and the final designs had to strongly reflect the initial graphic responses.

After brainstorming many different ideas, I decided that whatever I was going to do, it was going to be in 3D probably due to the fact that I enjoyed my Vodka Bottle project in Cinema 4D so much - that is the beauty of University, you get so much creative freedom!

I then came across this post called 50 Essential Photoshop Text Tutorials and I saw in there a tutorial link to design in 3D (Nik Ainley style). I knew that I wanted to do something like that and I got inspiration from his two pieces that are shown below.

After a bit more brainstorming I came to the concept of using one word to describe the type of music that the band played. I would then use that word as the main piece on the front cover. I chose the word Smooth for the calm music and the word Rough for the heavy metal music and the word Digital for the electronic music.

I then went out and got myself a copy of Xara3D (USD$45) which I tell you is VERY easy to use for a 3D program. It took a total of 10 minutes to figure out without any tutorials, just playing with the buttons.

I then pumped out the 3D letters into Photoshop and then did about 80% of the designing in Photoshop and 20% in illustrator for the vectorised pieces. Below you can see the design process I used to create the first CD cover.

You will notice the visual consistency between the three CD covers as we were required to have this between both designs, there were meant to be all from the same publisher. We also had to have all legal requirements on the CD jackets.

The album title was given to us and for the smooth song it was called Mad World, the rock one was called Attitude and the electronic one was called Equinoxe. The first Smooth cover took a day to complete and the attitude one took about half as long as I was more familiar with what to do and the digital one took about 3 hours.

Below are the final designs, try to compare them to my visual responses up above.

You will notice in the Smooth design, I have used the colours blue and green with an ocean type feel (check out the Jellyfish).

In the Rough design you will notice I have used angry red colours in a grungy chaotic mess that reflects my original musical response. The text was purposely made hard to read to reflect the chaotic nature of the music.

In the Digital one I have used an in-your-face, high energy, bright coloured design which reflects my original music response. You will notice the circles on the back cover, kind of popping as like in my original drawing.

Front Cover

CD

Back Cover

Inside Cover

CD Mock Up

Front Cover

CD

Back Cover

Inside Cover

Mock Up

Front Cover

CD Cover

Back Cover

Inside Cover

MockUp

Constructive criticism is welcome as always, please be as harsh as possible. I won’t hate you, I am here to learn! What is your favourite? You can read more of about my University work by visiting the university category page.

Brief credit goes to Lydnal McGovern from Newcastle University.

59 comments thus far »

A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s.

Published on Friday, April 18, 2008 – 6:24 pm | 18 brilliant comments »

This was an essay I wrote one year ago for a University class. I do recommend printing it as it is 2000 words long. Click here for a printable version. Read more »

18 comments thus far »

Design Process for my Vodka Premix Bottle

Published on Sunday, April 13, 2008 – 2:38 pm | 64 brilliant comments »

In this University project, we had to create a Vodka premix bottle and label design for ‘Wedgetail Distillery’ using Cinema 4D and the Adobe Creative Suite. Here is how I went about doing it.

The scenario we were given (in short)

Wedgetail Distillery, makers of premium vodka produtcts have asked you to design the new bottle and labels for their pre-mixed vodka and citrus drink. It is a mid priced product (about $65 for a case of 24) and they are aiming for the 18 to 35 year old market. It must have all the Australian legal requirements (which we had to research). It can have up to 4 colours including special or spots or CMYK if you wish. It must feature an eagle somewhere.

You must complete a 3D render of your bottle in Cinema 4D and the final presentation must be A4 in size and it must be targeted towards the client to sell your design concept.

Design Process

Research

I first redefined the problem, then I researched bottle designs by going into my local bottle store and I also borrowed packaging books from the university library. I also researched vodka & the legal requirements for Australian packaging and alcohol. Who ever thought I was going to be researching Vodka?

Bottle Design Sketches

This was where we had to design the outline of the bottle. We could have any shape or texture or material we wanted, there were no restrictions.

I kept to the typical glass bottle design as I wanted to make it look realistic as possible however I did add some cool bevelled effects to the bottom of the glass bottle.

You can see to the left the shape of the bottle designed.

Label Design Sketches & Vectorisation

After I had the bottle design done I could now start on the design of the label. I did a lot of sketches here and then once I had the general idea of how I wanted the design to look I started vectorising my ideas.

You can see the vector outline of my original label to the left and then the final label designs below. The fonts I used were Mesquite Std Medium (for Wedgetail), Adobe Garamond Pro Bold (for Citrus), Edwardian Script ITC Regular (for Premium Vodka).

The colours I used were Pantone 877C (Metallic), Pantone 8404C (Metallic), Pantone 1795 C (Solid Uncoated), Pantone Process Black U.

3D Rendering

After the labels were completed we had to render the 3D bottle in Cinema 4D from our original bottle designs. After we had rendered the 3D bottle then we had to bring the labels into Cinema 4D and wrap them around the 3D Bottle.

Below you can see a screenshot from Cinema 4D of me doing all of this.

Presentation

After I had completed all the renderings it was time for me to make them presentable. In Photoshop I experimented with different backgrounds and effects to see what was the best. Below you can see just some of the experimentations of different background effects.

I added the lemons into the composition to for scale and to add a bit of contrast to the image and to emphasise the citrus flavour of the vodka premix drink. I created smoke using the clouds filter and then used a light feathering on the clouds. I then added a zoom effect to make it look like a kind of back light coming out of the bottle.

Final Composition

Below is the final A4 composition that I printed out on Semi Gloss photo paper and to be honest it looks so much better in print. What do you guys think?

If you want to check out more of my university work go here.

As an added extra, just because I liked this project so much I did a little mock up of the 6 pack box.

Comments are always appreciated.

64 comments thus far »