Remember Visual Hierarchy in your Advertising
Whether you are creating bill board, an exhibition stand or leaflet you need to pay attention to how you will direct people around your publication. The concept of visual hierarchy is one of the first things that graphic designers learn and it allows you to emphasise important elements in your publications with ease.
In fact I’m using it right now and you’ve probably used it today as well. Visual hierarchy is useful when it comes to creating attractive, easy to read adverts, ensuring that potential customers easily absorb your message.
Contrast
This will come up again and again in this post, but anything that contrasts from the rest of a piece will stand out and be seen as important. For example if you pattern of blue dots with one red dot then the red dot will immediately be noticed.
Size
It is fairly obvious that larger elements tend to be ‘heavier’ than smaller elements. So the more important the image is the larger it should be in comparison to other images. So you would usually want to make the most important part of an image the largest. Though there are exceptions to this rule. For example a single small but contrasting element surrounded by larger elements, will stand out creating a vulnerable impression.
Position
In Western cultures we tend to scan pieces from the top left to the bottom right in an ‘E’ pattern. Having said that the first place we tend to look at is the centre. So a distinctive central image will attract the most ‘weight’ and after that whatever is in the top left corner. Think of a billboard as opposed to this article. Probably the first thing you notice when you look at a billboard is near the centre. In contrast when you look at this article the first thing you notice is the title. This is because there is nothing distinctive in the centre, just a block of text.
Position has another crucial role. If you arrange everything in an organised pattern then anything that breaks that pattern will stand out. (Type dare to be different into Google Images to get an idea of what I’m talking about).
Colour
For some reason different colours tend carry different weights, with red and black seeming to be the ‘heaviest’ with green and yellow being the ‘lightest’. You will see over and over again red being used to distinguish an important item, think of fire extinguishers and alarms, there is a reason why they tend to painted red.
Whitespace
Whitespace, though it can be blackspace, or green whatever your background colour is really, helps to organise the information and prevent it appearing overwhelming. If you have ever tried to scan a long text message for details you will know how annoying a stream of text is. By putting spaces between elements then it allows you to group them.
Grouping
By grouping elements together you can show that they are related. For example without reading this paragraph you can still tell all the words are related because they are closer to each other than they are to the words in other paragraphs. In addition the whitespace between the paragraphs helps to establish them as separate groups. You can also establish relationships by repeating elements, so for example the sub headings in this article are seen as a group because they bolder than the rest of the text.
I hope this article has helped give you a basic idea of the principle behind visual hierarchy and how they can help make you publications easier to read and more informative. There is a wealth of information out there which can help you understand
About the author: Daniel Frank regularly blogs about marketing and design is currently writing on behalf of Nimlok Exhibition Stands.
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Death of Advertising Dinosaurs
With worldwide economic uncertainty upon us, it’s no surprise that many companies are reducing spending, and looking to steward their financial resources towards those activities that provide the most bang for the buck. As a result of reigning in the spending, and more demand for a higher return on investment (ROI) from their scarce financial resources, the final nail in the coffin could be coming down for one of the last remaining dinosaurs of our time…the Advertising Dinosaurs!
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The Issue:
According to the Advertiser Perceptions, Inc. Spring 2008 report the dinosaurs of the advertising world are getting hit hard. Here is how the companies that reported data (1,811 total) expect their advertising budget mix to change:
- 23% of advertising budgets are expected to decrease in the next six months
- The most severely impacted by this are newspapers, radio, and broadcast TV
- 44% of newspaper ad budgets are expected to decline in the next six months
- 43% of “local” newspaper ad budgets are expected to decline as well
- 33% of radio budgets were expected to decline
- 30% of TV budgets and 20% of cable TV budgets were expected to decline.
The Aftermath:
As companies look for ways to cut advertising budgets while still reaching the consumer, other forms of advertising are going to look extremely attractive, most notably online advertising.
What will happen once these companies see the kind of ROI they get from online advertising? How many do you think will go back to a full-page ad in the newspaper when the economy improves? My guess, very few. What company in their right mind is going to take out an ad in the Sunday paper for $$$$$ when for a fraction of that cost you can target a market of buyers down to the minutia? With social media in its infancy, especially in how it integrates advertising, the possibilities to reach customers are huge, and expanding by the second. Again, why spend the advertising dollars in hopes your radio ad is heard by the right people at the right time, when you can target advertise on Myspace and Facebook for a fraction of the cost, and reach a more targeted consumer?
In Summary:
I’m not saying that all forms of advertising except online will die entirely. There will still be room for focused, super niche advertising in print and on radio/TV. But for mainstream newspapers, or cable TV, this is the beginning of the end for life as they know it in the advertising world. The only way those mediums can compete in the future is by lowering their pricing structure to a point they are a value again, and in my opinion even at a value price the bang for the buck will still default to content rich, targeted, online advertising. Some of the larger magazine and news outlets will change their business models to focus more on online content (some do it well already, the Wall St. Journal comes to mind), but for the rest they look to be going the way of the dinosaur.
How has your company’s advertising mix changed in the last six months?
