TECHNIQUES 20 TIPS FOR BETTER ADVERTISING IMAGES
- BALANCE YOUR TYPOGRAPHY
- TAILOR WORK FOR CLIENTS
“Having my work based on typography most of the
time, I’ve had plenty of situations when I couldn’t
decide if readability should be on top of crazy ideas
and concepts for an ad. But in my personal opinion, I
would always go for creativity,” says Jose Garrido
(www.noem9studio.com). “Typography can be so
playful and impactful. You just need to think a bit
harder and be careful to keep the message readable
in a way that people understand it.
“Typography can be so playful and impactful. You just
need to think a bit harder and be careful to keep the
message readable in a way that people understand it.
“I like creating new effects using typography. It’s a
simple way of creating an idea just by simulating a
material or an object. It depends on the project, but I
usually think of concepts related to the campaignPedro Aguilar (www.aguilarphoto.net) creates
striking photography for advertising campaigns.
His job is to create exceptional visuals, but also
communicate the message that the client is
trying to get across to its audience. He is normally
approached with quite a clear concept of what
needs to be achieved: “When an ad agency lands a
brief in front of you to release a campaign, usually
there has been months of discussions between
the creatives and the clients, so the idea [that’s]
needed to put the message across has been
already clearly defined. For example, in the case
of this campaign, Caixa Bank youth card, the
client already has an existing product, a youth
card that you can use to get discounts at concerts,that I could apply to a type piece. Sometimes it can
be as easy as using a ribbon to create a lettering for
a Christmas campaign. But others can be quite tricky
to find the right one that works for the brief.
“I’m always learning about typography, you can
never know too much. Something that has helped
me a lot when working on type illustrations is having
created my own typefaces (even if they’re not
perfect). That process has given me a deeper
understanding on how type shapes work and how to
design with that in mind.
“You can’t start creating a type piece without
knowing the basics about how typography works.
But when you know those things, it’s up to you when
and how you break the rules. I don’t like just working
by the book.”events, etc. The campaign aim was to advertise
the fact that you can now have access to those
benefits via its new application on your
smartphone. The idea had been already
developed by the ad agency.
“I’d like to think that by making an exceptional visual,
the message come across the better. It is true though,
that in some cases the final visuals need to go through
a whole process of approval by different departments
and individuals within an organisation, and this can
usually have a water-down effect, as it is virtually
impossible to please every taste. However, when a
client comes to you, it’s because they like your style
and the way you do things, so you just go on working
as if you where doing it for yourself!”- REFINE THE DETAILS
Frank Sandres works as an art director for Ogilvy &
Mather Honduras, so he knows how important it is
to get the visuals just right in order to communicate
a client’s message, and Photoshop plays a large role
in this, as he explains: “To me, one of the most
important things in commercial imagery is the
elegance of the visual communication. You have to
focus on details, colours and the beauty of the thing
that you are selling.
“To work on those refined details, one of my
favourite tools is the Patch tool, because you can
clean up every single imperfection without [taking
away] its natural look and feel, and the result could
be beyond the expected.
“Photoshop is in 80 per cent of the projects I work
on, because of its versatility on different types of
work: photomanipulation, retouching images, cutting
or adding pieces into the artwork, 3D lettering, app
design, storyboarding, concepts and so on.”
© Juguetería Educativa Bambi© Noem9 Studio© Pedro Aguilar