Behind the Scenes: Ad Design

It's true, good ad design is intentional ad design.

I love building ads. They bring together five of my favorite things; design, marketing strategy, creativity, photography (sometimes), and most importantly story telling. There's a lot that goes into an ad and there are specific reasons for each element. So if you're curious what goes into building an ad, or why I do things a specific way, keep reading...

Let's start from the beginning, when a client contacts me about an ad design the first thing I do is establish an audience and a purpose. This means assessing who the client is and what they're marketing. In my world, most of the time the answer is cows. There are lots of people with lots of cows, so I need to ask, "What makes this situation unique?"

What are the overall goals of the operation? What sets them apart from the norm? What's really great about their place? What's really great about their cattle? Are they marketing bulls or females? Are they marketing specific animals for an upcoming sale, semen, or their overall genetics? Who are they marketing to? What part of the country are they in? Are we marketing to commercial cattlemen who want to see performance? Or to purebred/seed stock guys who will be interested in bloodlines as well as performance? Do we have good photos? What do we want people to feel when they look at this ad? What colors represent the feel of this individual or the message we're sharing? I could go on, but you get the point. There are hundreds of questions I ask myself and the producer before I ever put anything on paper (or screen).