[Judas]

... if you are only bright enought to judge something by way of : its shit , or it sucks, please stay right the fuk out of this thread.

i was asked to redesign a newspaper ad , this one :
http://s92915907.onlinehome.us/newsad11.jpg

which appeared in my local paper. now, it is a jumbled up mess ... it shows no organization etc.

heres my redesign:
http://s92915907.onlinehome.us/newsad_v4.jpg

there are tons of things that bother me about it, the body for one. pls note : that i couldnt remove anything from it, the shitty logo at the bottom for instance and the source images i was supplied with were less than usable. all the illustrative elements had to be 300dpi so pickings were slim. most of the images where scanned one a white back so making a "good" selection so that i could use them on other backs were close to impossible. greatly limiting my design choices.

anyway, heres my question. i thought that my design was quite sophicated and organized ( obiously, there are some visual problems with it tho that i havent figured out how to fix just yet ). But it seems like most people prefer adds that resemble the original ... the corny stars , offsetting the text around the stars etc .. which in my mind is quite ugly and "tacky". I guess its a matter of taste ... how i find that original add to be "tacky", most people are accustom to seeing "tacky" adds and accept them as being "good". So, now im beginning to wonder if im going at this with "too much taste", if i am judging my own work by my own standards instead of desiging something that will be "accepted" by people who perhaps dont have the level of "taste" as i do.

Should i adjust and make ads that are more acceptable, or stick to my guns and continure to design by my own standards?

[HeadUp]

ive been designing flyers for ppl for money recently, in fact i just finished one a couple days ago...id post it but the dimensions are 1200x1800 and im on a uni mac right now

designing shit to other ppls specifications can be a real bitch, but you have to remember that its what they want that you need to focus on, and even if the design theyre asking you to do seems retarded to you (and trust me i was getting real pissed about all the dumb shit they were having me do to it), you need to focus on making what they ask you to

honestly, i think as tacky as the orig ad was, yours was too bland, i would recommend adding more pics of the little shit kids, and get rid of some of the excess space

hopefully that helps

[Poseidon]

You got to remember who the target audience is: KIDS. A design of a ad will change completely depending on who the target audience is. Its supposed to be a "jumbled up mess".

To be honest your design wont attract a kid to it, they wont think twice before missing the add. Mainly due to the amount of text on your add and the lack of pictures and colour. However, the first add is much better (when focused towards its target audience) It has pictures of kids showing off their talents, little pictures of stars floating around, a small amount of text, giving a maximum amount of details. Its laid out in much more of a poster type, its going to attract a kid to it. Just think of your advertisement in a newspaper, with say 25-30 other advertisements on the same page, Which one is going to attract a child.

Your design would be suitable for an audience more of a target audience of 16+.

[Judas]

i totally agree about the white space head ... my problem now is trying to figure out what to put in that space ...


: pick up a ny times sometimes and take a look at their ads ... very clean , lots of white space handled well. Thats really what i was going for in way of design. id been looking at the nytimes quite a lot the past few weeks ( and still am as a matter of fact ) , looking for ads i like. Most of the ads , either for business or for times have a shit load of white space .... most of them carry the "less is more" idea of which i am fond.


about the target audience: i thought about this for quite a long time and came to the conclusion that there probably arent going to be many kids 12 < reading the paper ... maybe a few. so i decided that the ad should appeal more to the parents. good flow of information and clean.

[Jin-Roh]

it looks great.. but some minor things could be done. it's just an ad, though. good job.

[HeadUp]

id put some little kids doing the same type of shit as the first ad around the 92.3 fm thingy for starters

[Colonel]

I agree. The target audience is the parent who thinks their kid is the greatest singer since Elvis ... even though the kid sounds like William Hung. However, I do think the ad should appeal to kids for two reasons, the kids will eventually see the ad, and the parents that think they have the next Elvis all have a sixth grade education.

I like the ad that you did but I think since it is a kid's show it should be a little more eye catching. The original ad that the paper used is teh suk. The only thing it has going for it IMO is that the title is big and semi-flashy.

I also agree that you should add a few more kid pics in there. I really like the picture that you chose for the main title....naybe you could go with something like that on the bottom...by that I mean something that looks a little more sophisticated than the "cut and paste" look that is in the original. Maybe do some kids with microphones, instruments, etc as a watermark behind the text?

or, How about this idea....

Big white bar with the title in black across the top and some stupid stars. - maybe a kid or two

the black picture in the middle (the picture of the girl that you are currently using.) but have it only cover half the page and in the other half have the "do you have talent?" line in big letters.

and then some more white at the bottom with pictures of kids and the main verbage.

----------
aw crap, what am I talking about? ... I suck at this. I think I like the watermark idea the best.

**EDIT*** BTW is this a full page ad or a small ad in the corner - if small then I think yours is perfect the way it is .... if large, add a couple of kids to it - if that's what they want. Confusious say, "He who write check get to make decision"

[eeves]

Think about this two situation....what if you go with their way, and the audience replied is that is crap, you are going to be blame for. Next situation ...is that if you go with your way and the replied is that is crap, well at least you know that you tried. Besides you can never satify everyone.