Design Tips

Product Identification

The product identification itself should be persuasive. Your name should be appealing and it should grab customers quickly.

Short Copy

Your message should be catchy and equally interesting. This would enhance the attentiveness of your audience to your product.

Legible Type

Visibility is very important. Your text should be readable even from a distance in order to catch your audience’s attention.

Layout

All elements of design should coincide and harmonize with one another. The campaign should come together in a single package.

Images

An image paints a thousand words. It can be easily perceived and remembered by people. Your images should be big enough to capture attention. Also, it should effectively convey the message of your ad.

Bold Colors

Your design should be easily recognized from in its surroundings in order to grab the attention of the people.

Simple Background

The background, whether plain or more complex, should not hamper the message of the ad. Instead, it must support its meaning and escalate the attractiveness of the campaign material.

Innovative / Creative / Humorous

If you can include these traits in your design, it will go a lot further than any other message.

Less Is More

Stick to the point and remain focused. Narrowed ads usually are more impressive and influential to prospective clients.

Viewing Time

In less than 10 seconds, your ad message must be delivered effectively in order to make the biggest impact.

Artwork

Usually focused designs are most appealing to audiences. In outdoor advertising, communicating brief and concise messages are much more comprehensive than spinning ads. Thus, an advertiser should incorporate his/her most significant and vital product leverage and communicate it to audiences.
Here are some basic guidelines in creating your own billboard layout:

• Suggested scale for all vinyl production is: Ω”=1′
• Add .25″ around all sides to make a 6″ bleed on the billboard vinyl.
• Keep critical elements .25″ away from the edge of the live area of the layout.
• All elements and photographs should be at least 300 dpi at Ω” =1′ scale. Optimal output can be up to 408 dpi, so there is no need for anything larger.
• If you are looking for specific colors, it is best to provide PMS pantone colors for each element of your design.
• If possible, all text should be converted to outlines in order to eliminate any potential errors in font matching.
• A great rule of thumb is to provide all font files, in the even that we need to make changes.

Outdoor advertising is a unique advertising medium and your format and design is extremely important to the overall success of your marketing campaign.

High Contrast

High contrast is extremely vital for visibility. This will help your billboard stand out from your competitors and get noticed.

High Resolution for High Quality

Some may think that you can make any image printable. This is just simply untrue. Images need to be cautiously selected. Remember, this image will be on a billboard which is a pretty large surface. If there are any imperfections or flaws in the original image, they will be seen from all angles. You want your image to be just as important as your message in order for your audience to take you and your reputation seriously. Another factor to consider is resolution. Low resolution images, which are typically small thumbnails, which are only 72 dpi. The reason they are this low is they are typically meant to appear on websites, which are meant to load quickly. However, when it comes to printing low resolution images at large, it is never a good idea as the quality will be poor.