Advertising: The good, the bad and the ugly.

There is good advertising and there is bad advertising. Whether you pay an ad firm to design your ads or you go it alone, advertising still costs money so it’s important to get it right every time. Keep in mind that the goal of advertising is to help you make more money.

Let’s start with the good. The good, believe it or not, follow successful formulas for good design. That’s right, even though advertising design is a creative medium there are still formulas for success and rules for good design. Good advertising conveys a message with impact, makes that message the focus of the advertisement, appeals to the intended audiences wants, needs, desires, fears, intelligence and or status.

Bad advertising on the other had typically breaks the rules of good advertising by attempting to be everything to everyone, cramming as much information on the page as possible and or over highlighting the less important parts of the ad.

Here are the most common mistakes:

1. Over Logo’in

Over Logo’in is the act of placing too much emphasis on the logo and not enough on the message. Another example is having the logo compete with the space of the message. While branding is important in advertising, big logos are not a branding trick. The key to branding is establishing an image for the brand, i.e., the company and then keeping consistent with that image. It’s more than a symbol or the name of the company. Advertisings goal is to get people to notice your ad and respond to it. If they respond to it, trust the formula, they will then look for your logo.

1 | 2 | 3