historical society ad

OK, I just felt the need to share this. What began as a simple resizing of a previous ad became a full-fledged redesign. This is what I started with (not my design):



The original purpose of this project was to shrink this down a bit to meet the specs for a trivia card/flyer that will be distributed in area restaurants. As I began piecing it together, naturally I wouldn't let myself settle for a clone of the previous ad. Here's the final piece I came up with (size is 3.675 x 1.938 in.):



It was pretty bland and unoriginal until I put the green bar behind the headline and made the text white with a drop shadow. Moving the photo to the edge (instead of simply lining up with the headline and address) was another step. After that, the design pretty easily fell into place. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, as was my, uh, client.

Rationale for the design geeks out there: What I learned from this was that I could create "pockets" on the page that had their own rules. I started out with a 1/4" margin, and instantly began aligning the elements along those guides. I felt a need to keep that even border all the way around (a novice excuse for "repetition"). Once I broke out of those boundaries by moving the photo to the edge, I realized I could move the address block underneath it, creating its own little "pocket" that had 1/8" margins, reinforced by the green bar--the green bar being an example of actual repetition from the green headline block. That 1/8" spacing was used again in the main body of the ad, which gave me enough space to fit all the text while still being "breathable." It wasn't until I accepted breaking my original 1/4" margin that I was able to make this piece work.