What is advertising design if not the point at which marketing and art meet?

Some might say that design made for ads is meant only to sell goods and services.

But if you look at it this way—that advertising design is the practice of bringing creative design principles into the world of marketing so that advertisers and agencies can find art in commerce—you can make the work you do (or the work you pursue for your brand) more exciting, more sophisticated, and ultimately more effective.

The Benefits of Artful Ad Design

“Ultimately more effective.” That’s a bold statement to make about advertising design, especially in American markets where businesses can value performance metrics more than brand development or creative execution.

According to a survey by the Harvard Business Review, however, creativity (and ad design, by extension) can have a definitive sales impact. Gauging responses on advertising samples that considered an ad’s originality, flexibility, artistic value and more, their researchers found that money spent on highly creative ad campaigns produced more sales than the same budget spent on what respondents considered a noncreative campaign.

The whole article is worth your time, but if your team asks you, “What is advertising design? And why should I care?” you can tell them it’s a proven, necessary tactic for raising your business’ bottom line.

Take a Strategic Ad Design Approach

Strong ad design strategies have deep roots in psychology. Case in point: the Harvard Business Review team built their survey on creativity in ad campaigns with inspiration from Ellis Paul Torrance, creator of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking(TTCT), which Indiana University researchers later adapted for use in advertising.

To develop your ad design strategies, we recommend building a set of questions for your team—or your creative/advertising design agency—that touches on the Indiana researchers’ criteria:

• Originality: What can you or your agency do that’s left-field? What’s a design motif you might see more in consumer goods, but could turn heads (in a good way) for a luxury brand? How can your campaign create visual surprise?
• Flexibility:  What is advertising design that shows how your product meets multiple consumer needs at once (e.g. a Pomodoro timer can be great for productivity, but also be a countdown to something exciting—how do you connect those ideas in an ad)?
• Elaboration: How can design be an additional element reinforcing your product’s core benefit? How can ad design make audiences think about your product in a new way?
• Synthesis: Where flexibility is about including multiple ideas that are related to each other by your product, this one’s about ideas, people, places, or things that typically don’t connect at all. How can you or your advertising design agency take unrelated concepts and use them to tell an unforgettable story about your brand?
• Artistic Value: This is about being aesthetically pleasing. What aspect of design approach do you need to focus on (or adjust) to resonate with your core audience? Will they want memorable sonic branding? Will a nostalgic color palette fit best? Will animation or live action footage better fit your campaign’s tone?

But Remember: Advertising Design Goes Beyond the Visual

Successful ad design strategies also keep in mind that design thinking goes beyond the visual. Design thinking increasingly applies to overall content creation, including copywriting. When clever word choices pair with strong visual treatments, for example, they can make the whole composition more aesthetically pleasing.

Our Hands-On Tips for Successful Ad Design

This is great food for thought, but how to put it into action? Our creative team suggests the following tips for ad design that they use every day:

• Play with your call to action: Calls to action are usually short. Think about how your design can build on that to make it memorable for your audience.
• Get (a little) weird: Top tips for ad design should always include calls to be a little unusual. This could be the visual associations you make, or it could how you choose to represent something iconic. When you think outside the box with your design, you could make something unforgettable.
• Illustrate your point: Advertising is about getting a message across using artistic principles. If you forget any other tips for ad design, remember at the earliest stage of your work to consider how your layout, images, typefaces, and more can make the message of your ad clear enough to understand and compelling enough to inspire action from your audience.

Finding the Right Creative Advertising Design Agency for You

If you need support creating big ideas (and compelling designs to bring them to life), an agency is a great solution. When you’re selecting your creative and advertising design agency, however, look for a few signs that they’re right for you:

• They listen to your needs and use them as the compass that guides their work
• They research your audience and use that to guide their design choices
• They can produce designs for their clients that surprise audiences while fitting the brand and your business goals

When a creative agency can do that, you know you’ve found a advertising partner that can make solid, effective marketing that’s built to last. If that’s what you’re looking for, contact Mascola Group—Marketing with Integrity is what we’re all about.