I’m new to designing ads for newspapers, but not new to designing and laying out newspaper pages. I worked a semester at the Truman Index. I stared at very full newspaper pages with columns and columns of text all the time while trying to fit even more stuff in there. It’s all about how much crap (stories?) you can fit on one page.
So, why not break that rule when making newspaper ads?
- Newspapers seem to disregard the idea of negative space. So I realized that to make a great ad is to use a lot of negative space.
- Also, using very large text, larger than the largest headline on the page works well.
- Scope out the newspaper before designing an ad for it. See how they layout the page, and do the opposite: use negative space, use text on an angle. Why text on an angle? Because no other text on the page will be angled and the eye will be drawn to your ad.
- If you are lucky enough to have an ad on a page with color, and you know there will already be a lot of color on the page, do this: Make yours black and white… Why? Because there is a lack of color the eye will stop on your ad for “rest”.
Check out Great Newspaper Ads pt. 2 from August 12, 2008
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