Just a pretty face..

This billboard is on the corner of William Nicol and Sandton drive. I was alerted to this beauty by a fellow Designer Twitterer last week. Thank you @anjavanstaden. It seems that who ever did this job decided to just: 'find a nice effect on the web - do the tutorial-and slap it on the billboard' - let the client pay.
This billboard is in one of the prime positions in the Sandton/ Johannesburg area. I shudder to think what the monthly media rate is here. (more than my yearly income perhaps?!) My personal feeling of this board is that it is pretty yes, and maybe the brief was: " Ok design/creative team, we're gonna throw some money at making a pretty billboard so that the people who see it will like us for bringing them something nice to look at and so will have good will toward us and will therefore support our product..." yeah right! Come on guys if we're branding a product, cool, that gives us a lot of opportunity to make it special to make it fun, interesting, dramatic and yes even magical but this is just a purdie pictcha on a big board. It has no viral effect, other than the three of us who write and read this blog.. ;-)
Of all the marketing media, I feel that the billboard or Out-of-home medium is one of the old school mediums that will be here to stay. at least until we've discover tele-porting, because we'll all need to travel from A to B in some way. Hmm.. maybe if we get personal flying machines we'll even have floating billboards on the roads in the air... who knows? Other Media types will come and go and gain / loose some piece of the advertising spend pie.
Now just because I have DSTV / MNet here it doesn't mean that all the other billboards arround Jo'burg are just hunky dorey on the contrary, 95% are much worse than this one... But I don't want to give every blerrie billboard an audience (of three) no no no, I want the good stuff. So if you find something really good, let me know!

Feeling Blue

This trailer billboard was also snapped a few days on William Nicol. This is the type of thing that gives me the heebie-geebies (and that's a bad thing)
At the best of times these trailer ads are placed on prime spots and I guess they don't pay rentals to any land lord
as all the other out door media owners do. But you can't fault the moving billboard company for doing this, as they are likely able to give a good price to the advertisers, again I stand corrected.
But even though the advertiser got a good price to have his poster displayed, at least he could have spent some time on getting the design right for outdoor advertising. Let's count the problems:
The use of colour. Blue on blue, I wonder who thought that would be a bright idea? What is the first thing that you need to get right in outdoor creative? Contrast. Thank you.
I suppose the What's upp caption in the graphic is supposed to be funny/a pun, but if you don't know that it is the acronym of the business name, then you'd think it was a spelling error. Not that you would see it anyway, as the colours don't make this board very readable!
Next trick, oh my favourite, let's duplicate our newspaper / print add cos that has brought us a lot of leads.... nonsense.
As you can see, there are enough problems in this billboard to last a life time. I put it her because it helps to educate. You can't blame the client if they were not properly educated on the use of outdoor advertising.
Look and learn!

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.

What are your comments?