Thursday, May 7, 2009

Kellogg's Sunshine - on Wiliam Nicol

On monday (4 May) I was driving back from my Orthodontist appointment and had my camera with me to take some photos along the way.
As a creative person working in the advertising industry, it is almost impossible to drive through town without looking at every billboard you pass. Especially now that I am blogging about it.
What I look for in a billboard might not always be the intention of the advertiser, so we will often have different ideas. In fact that what makes creating a good billboard poster so difficult,is that we as designers think we know it all but we really need to listen to the client and the intended purpose of the campaign. Looking at the boards form the outside, as we are doing here does not give us the brief that the client gave to the advertising agency and the design team.
What are we then looking for?
We are looking for something that catches our attention, and once it has done that we hope it will entice us to read the copy on the board, if it's not to small. :-\
The best ways that billboard messages work however are by using as little text as possible and let the image do the talking. The Kiss acronym really comes in handy when designing a billboard layout. Keep It Simple Silly!

I found the Kellogg's poster on this PrimeLite engaging enough to make it register in my conscious mind. What I like about it is the bold colourful design. The star burst really draws in the eye and the colour works with the message.."Good Morning Sunshine"
However, the copy of the text is way to small , too bold and adding the red outline really makes it impossible to read.
Rule: Outlines on small copy does not work!
Another little problem is the logo. Though it is a logo we all know and is very recognisable, if it appears on the poster so small that it is almost invisible, then it might as well not have been there at all. And then we are talking about a red/white logo on an orange back ground. Not gonna work! Let's not even mention the pay off line.. (it actually says" 100 years of good mornings" I know cos I used a zoom lens to take the photograph!)

PrimeLites are 3x6m Internally Illuminated boards in the upper LSM area's of Santon and are owned by Primedia Outdoor.


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