The creative revolution in advertising

Over the years advertisements have increasingly developed, with the designs becoming more and more sophisticated.

Before the creative revolution their used to be a unified layout design for print advertisements, as designers knew it was a well tested approach to attract the attention of the viewing public. Their were also far more restrictions in the design process, such as their was a higher awareness of using the correct use of language in order to not offend anyone.

The image would also have as little white space as possible due to the cost of an image would be the same regardless of how much or little content it was comprised of. Therefore the company would want a full image to get their moneys worth. Even if the designer felt that the composition would have had more impact with less content by creating a more balanced image, the head of the company would have the final say.

 The standard layout for a print ad was a squared up image, with a heading describing exactly what was shown in the image. It would also have three columns of text underneath the heading and a large logo at the bottom, which is shown in the following advertisement. It shows the typical American dream car, which was in fact was a ‘dream’ as only a small majority of Americans could actually afford it.

However with the influence of pioneering graphic designers this unified approach of design for advertising soon developed and broke away from the old regimented restrictions and designers started taking risks with their designs.

One key graphic designer from the creative revolution was William Bernback, who introduced the idea of the concept into advertising communication. Bernback also developed the art director and copywriter team, due to designers and writers use to have to work separately, where designers were called commercial artists by joining these two teams together allowed for a far more creative and efficient process.
In 1949 William Bernback, Ned Doyle and Mac Dane co founded the advertising agency; Doyle Dane Bernback, in which was responsible for the famous revolutionary Volkswagen advertising campaign.


This advertisement shows how ‘DDB’ changed the approach of advertising from the American dream of a huge expensive car, to a more realistic compact car. Their approach was to not state the obvious, for example the title ‘Lemon’; is not expected and it is not directly describing the image, but makes the viewer read the piece of text underneath to get the complete meaning.

 Even today, the same approach of advertising is still being used for Volkswagen, for example the following image is recent Volkswagen campaign where it highlights the fact it is a reliable car, however it is not stating the obvious.

Simple but different

It has become increasingly difficult to get a piece of print advertisement noticed, as we are constantly bombarded with information and images in which are all competing against each other for our attention. Therefore the combination of bold colours, multiple images, large pieces of text with exclamation marks and arrows will not work in your favour, but rather work against you as it becomes too complicated and confusing.

 Leonardo da Vinci, “…simplicity is the ultimate sophistication…” By simplifying a piece of text or an image to only show the most meaningful parts and removing the unnecessary obvious information, which can communicate a far greater impact. To create a piece of advertisement into a great simplistic form, involves a lot of clever thinking behind it to make sure it is not dull but unexpected simple, for example by putting a twist to the usual outcome.

 Juan Cabral is an Argentinean art director who shows how deeply researching a subject, can lead to uncovering a different insight rather than the obvious connections, which can be highly predictable and so making the advertisement boring. This idea can either be really simple or simplified, making the advertisement easy to follow but still keeping it meaningful and so memorable. One example of Cabral’s advertisements is for Sony Bravia, where the quality of colour was the unique selling point. He discovered an interesting fact that a television was made up of millions of tiny balls to create the colour image. Cabral therefore used this simple idea of having millions of brightly coloured balls falling down a street and so creating an intense surge of colour.

Sony Bravio Television Advertisment

Logos are another example of where the more simplistic you make it the better, due to the fact it is often the first glimpse into the company and therefore it should give an instant, clear message. Often when trying to put everything that the company has to offer into a logo can cause it to become over complicated. This then may lead people to misinterpret the message and so causing them to go else where and possibly to other competition. After completing a recent project which involved designing a logo for ‘Visit Birmingham’, allowed me to realise the importance of keeping logos as simple as possible. This is due to the fact that they need to be adaptable on any type of medium, from the largest scale such as a billboard to the opposite end of the scale such as business card.

 One artist, whose work I find inspirational for various reasons is Peter Callesen, one of those reasons is the fact that he combines one of the most simplistic mediums; white paper and the simple technique of cutting and folding. However with this minimalistic approach Callesen creates the most complex and meticulously intricate pieces of artwork all from a single piece of paper, even for his large scale installations.

Peter Callesen - White Diary

Information Design

When designing a piece of information you must keep it clear and simple to read, by only having the most important information which you want to communicate to the viewer. Due to the fact that our pace of life has become increasingly fast, this means we do not have enough time to stop and read a long piece of text and therefore information needs to be straight to the point to create an instant message.

 Information design comes in a variety of different forms, for example, packaging, recipes, road signs and bills. It has a clear purpose to inform the viewer by communicating a message in simple means which can be easily understood. For example a recipe is normally laid out with the ingredients listed in the order in which you will need them, followed by the process which is clearly broken down into bullet points.

 Otto Neurath developed the ‘Isotype system’ which is a method of showing connections of information in a pictorial form, for example displaying the information in chart or graph. This therefore allowed complex information to be not only easier to understand but also quicker to read.

 Erik Spiekerman typographer and font designer, “...in order to design for understanding, we need to understand design...” If you are designing a piece of information without any knowledge of the basic design rules, it is very likely that what you are trying to communicate with be confused and disjointed. There are key principals in which you should understand before designing a piece of text. Firstly grouping information; i.e. lines, space, headings, and sub-headings. Secondly consistency with the appropriate language, layout and a constant clear grid structure should be applied. The typography must also be legible and appropriate for the target audience to understand with consistent spacing and the use of white space and alignment also helps to balance the text to make it more inviting to read. Another principal to consider are graphic elements to aid the clarity of the text such as bullet points, line length and icons and finally the visual hierarchy; i.e. the type size/weight, colour, value, placement and spacing.

 A recent example where I have needed to use these rules of information design were for a product research questionnaire in which all of the principals played a significant part in the design element to make sure it was clear, simple to follow and quick/easy to complete.  Otherwise if I had ignored the basic rules the questions could have become misinterpreted and then my results would have been invalid.

The art of graphic communication

The art of being an effective graphic communicator is to be able to have your heart, head and hand working simultaneously together. Your heart is involved with expressing emotion along with engaging the audience, whereas your head is the tool behind the ideas and strategy and finally your hand is the technique behind your work.

 The process of design has to be appropriate for the given subject so that the message can be communicated effectively. Such as when designing for an invitation, you have to persuade, invite and engage and so setting up a relationship. However designing for informative means you need to be able to inform, educate and allow your information to be understood from complex data to simple concepts. It is also important to use consistent graphic language for example colour, typeface and layout as these will all help with making the information easier to read, understand and recognise.

 Information design can be anything from road signs, timetables, menus, instruction manuals to brochures. My recent visit to Cadburys world for product research is an example of how information design is in constant demand for our everyday movements. From the moment I left the house to start the journey, I needed to follow road signs to the train station, followed by looking at a timetable and platform number at the station. I then followed a map on foot, where I occasionally also checked the road signs to keep on track.

All of these different forms of information design are completely different, for example a road sign needs as little detail as possible as drivers will only have a small amount of time to take in the information as they go past. However if too many road signs are situated in one place, this can also cause an overload of information, regardless of how simple the individual signs are. Whereas a map designed for walkers will have a lot of detail including all the street names and locations in which you can plan your exact route.

Overload of signs

Another type of graphic communication is expressive graphics in which is involved in developing briefs, values and communicating messages. For example; motion graphics uses trade marks to create the story for a film.