One source of inspiration that I frequently turn to is advertisements. The beauty of ads is that professional graphic designers create them and with that professionalism comes creativity, knowledge of the principles of design, and often times really inspiring pieces. Ads are all around you – on the TV, on the computer, and in magazines. I tend to look for them online. I found the inspiration ad below by typing “Print Ad” in Google Images. It’s that easy!
This piece is interesting. It has a lot of different pieces and parts to it. I decided to focus on one element of the page. The black hexagons sprinkled around. I used a digital template from Janet Phillips at Sweet Shoppe Designs to create the page.
The members of the collective also took this ad on and came up with a bunch of different ways to use the ad.
Paula Gilarde took the title and the clouds/sun from the ad and incorporated them into this page.
Ann Costen decided to use the circles and the tiny grid design is mimicked in her background paper choice.
Lisa Ottosson took the title and type treatment and used them on this gorgeous page about her daughter.
I thought this ad would be difficult to interpret literally, but look at this layout from Marnie Flores! When she sent it to me I gasped! It incorporates the colors, shapes, typography, the foreign language and the ink even mimics the blobs on the page. Amazing! The best part was the comment in the email Marnie sent me. "I feel like one of those Project Runway peeps pushed outside my comfort zone, but not necessarily unhappy with where it took them." Love that the ad pushed her a bit!
Here are some other ways you could interpret the ad. You could…
- Use a misty purple or blue background.
- Create page with a chart or graph on it.
- Create page with a large circle or circle wedges.
- Create page that uses a background stamp like the grid design on the ad.
- Create page that uses concentric circles.
- Create a page that has similar colors.
- Create page with an underlined all caps title.
- Create a page with odd shaped tags on it, much like the scattering of hexagons on the ad.
- Create a page that documents what you were doing on October 1st.
The possibilities are really endless when using ads for inspiration. I’d love for you to play along. Upload your layout to the Flickr gallery and I’ll share a few pages from the gallery on Saturday.
