Understanding the many types of advertisement can help you create your own

 

Advertisements comes in a lot of different creative formats: posters, pamphlets, billboards, storefronts, film trailers, television ads and website ads including advertising a product the website has or advertising a big sale. Advertisements should have an impact on the person in amazement and make them want to buy the product or take the action you’re advertising. It should be simple yet visually appealing and bold.

You should sketch out a draft of what your advertisement would look like before you dive straight into making it digitally. It would give you an idea of what it might look like and it would help to have an example of the advertisement when you make a good copy on the computer.

Words can be used in an advertisement. You can use words for taglines like Mcdonald’s “I’m lovin’ it”. You see or hear this tagline every time the Mcdonalds commercial comes on TV and in any adverts Mcdonald’s might use. You can also use words as a statement; for example, an advertisement for an insurance company could have a picture of broken glass on the ground and words saying, “You never know when an accident can happen.”

According to Andrew Hall’s book, Illustration, advertising today can be categorized into three forms:

The client-led advertisement employs a low-risk strategy, operating in the client belief that the general public needs to be served commercial messages in a relatively simple, straightforward way that employs a recognizable format.

The creative-school advertisement employs a high-risk strategy that may potentially communicate to far fewer people than a safer, client-led advertisement, but allows advertisers to search for new creative formats, and in the process potentially produce award-winning results.

The viral advertisement is a digitally delivered advertisement that is “disruptive rather than “interruptive,” relying on their “I can believe what I’m seeing!” shock value and originality . . . . Digital advertising is a great way to sell products and not to mention it pays well too . . . . Digital advertising can be seen on websites, mobile apps, and anything that uses the internet.

Above is an creative-school advertisement. This poster is advertising The Vancouver Writers Fest. The poster has a half human, half crocodile representing the wild minds of writers and how they can create amazing pieces of work out of anything. It’s a very eye catching poster and makes you wonder what is it about. Why does this person have a half crocodile, half human face? What does this have to do with a writers festival? This poster is very simple but it has a creepy aspect that makes you think twice about it. Words were used in the tagline, “Reimagine your world”, and were also used to tell what day and month the event starts and ends.

This is an example of a viral advertisement. The ad is advertising a local real estate agent named Patricia Houlihan. Houlihan wanted an unusual advertisement that was going to be different from every other boring, person smiling, name at the bottom, real estate poster. Viewers may wonder whether the poster is a joke. People saw this and this advertisement quickly became viral. It gave Houlihan a boost in popularity and she has been getting lots of requests.

Below is an advertisement I did for the 8forty website:

This advertisement was about soliciting donations for the website. I used the client-led advertisement style to make this. One color you can probably see immediately is the bright blue. I chose blue because it represents the sky behind the mountains and blue is usually very calming, but it is also very bold and bright so it catches people’s eyes. The chalkboard and chalk font represent that we are a school-run website. The mountains were place at the bottom of the ad to make the chalkboard stand out more but it was also placed there to represent the mountains in the 8forty logo. The words at the bottom are in a bold white font to catch the eyes of the viewer and the bold feature makes it easier to read than a regular non-bold Arial font.

Making a good advertisement includes all of these techniques starting with the color you pick for your advertisement, the font you are going to use, pictures and how it is going to represent something, and the style of advertisement you’d seem fit. Remember that it is helpful to sketch out a rough concept of what your advertisement might look like before you get your hands on a computer. An advertisement may be hard to make, but with a big imagination and possibly some ideas from adverts you might see around you, making an advertisement isn’t so difficult.