Designing Ads for Dancer Magazine

Lizzie Miller | Jun 19, 2008 | 0

An in-house ad with white space.

The basic presets of making an ad for our magazine is that a single page is 8 x 10.875, with an eighth inch bleed on all sides, exported with crop and trim marks. But how do you make an ad that is really engaging that will stand out from everything else? Here are some basic rules to follow.

1)    Create a focus.
What is your message? Do you have an engaging headline? Is the logo the hero of the ad? Or do you have a striking picture? Whatever it is, your ad needs a focus. People can only gather so much information when flipping through a magazine, and you want to get their attention. The easiest way to do this is to create contrast through scale. Do not try to make everything huge at the same time: if someone is interested enough in your message they will read the small print (and by small print most people can easily read down to 7pt or 8pt). Information like dates, contact info and more specific information can become secondary to the bigger message. Movie posters often good examples of this as they often have a lot of copy but deliver one, clear message. Examples here, here, and here.

2)    Use your logo.
Logos are a vital part of your brand. Whether you are a dance competition, a shoe or clothes retailer, or making fruit smoothies, the best ads have a strong tie-in with their logo and other visual cues indicative of their particular brand. Here is a basic ad for Jamba Juice that not only naturally ties in the logo, but also uses the same colors and type that appear in the logo. An even better example is Snickers.

3)    Less is more.
Along with creating a focus and using your logo, limiting how much is going on is really important to make it clear to the viewer what your message is. You can do this by limiting your color palette (please, unless you are advertising Skittles, avoid using the rainbow). Also, try to limit the number of fonts you use to 2. Lastly, limit the number of pictures you have. One strong, clear picture says a lot more than 20 not so great ones. This is especially if you are using a lot of group shots (sorry, but if you have seen one big, smiling group of people, you have seen them all). And hey, it worked for Apple!

4)    White space is your friend.
Another way to use the less is more rule and create focus is to use not just image, but also the space AROUND the image to draw attention. But Lizzie, you ask, why cant I just make it really big? Because sometimes big does not mean important, it just means big! White space pulls focus and creates dynamic results. See the in-house ad above that I created (with apologies to Paula Scher).

5)    Have a concept.
If you have a strong concept, you can side step a lot of these rules.
WHAT!
Yes, yes you can.
But how?
Thinking conceptually means that you are not just giving the viewer a message, but rather giving them an idea, like a sort of puzzle to figure out. Like our buddies at Tide.

A word to the wise, high concept is a difficult thing to get and takes years to learn how to exercise, but if you get it, you own the ad world.

If you ever have questions or want to discuss, drop me a line.
Until next time,
Lizzie

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