What should a magazine ad look like?

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What should a magazine ad look like?
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sally_in_wales
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Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 12:00 pm Post subject:

Northern_Lad wrote:

I think it looks really good, although I'm disapointed not to see any pointy hats.

I did think about it, but thought luring them in gently with nothing too scary was a good bet to start with

VSS

Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Posts: 2845
Location: Llyn Peninsula, North Wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 1:19 pm Post subject:
make sure that you design the ad according to the exact dimensions. Find out mm x mm. It helps you plan, also a good idea to print off each version and look at it on paper. www.viableselfsufficiency.co.uk

marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 3:42 pm Post subject:
Looks good to me Sally, great layout. Just one tiny query about whether the rainbow coloured stocking is quite in keeping with the "traditional materials" theme of the other products? Maybe show one in a more subdued colourway? Just my opinion, probably everyone else will disagree...

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:07 pm Post subject:
I think you need your pointy hats in there (pointing out that felt hats can be made to most designs - perhaps a group hat pic?) They're your signiture product, and really single you out. They're bushcraft and survival nuts, so they're not going to be normal. They'll cope fine!

hedgewitch

Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Posts: 5834
Location: Daft wench GHQ

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:10 pm Post subject:
Really like the add, Sally. It looks great.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:27 pm Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

The article is all about natural/traditional beauty products, which is why the soap is there as one of the recipes is a washball

Hopefully helpful suggestions (almost said pointers...)
- do you know that you have an A5 landscape layout with full photo colour? Need to ensure that before expending too much effort. Their website shows a vertically halved page as an advert... (and a "media pack" for prospective advertisers is offered)
- did you spot that they have an advertiser already selling 'lotions & potions' ?? (She ought to be on here, I don't think we've got any water buffalo yet.)
- they have various backnumbers available (though with "allow 28 days delivery"). A spot of research (or a begging phonecall) shouldn't do any harm!

I don't know what you've used to assemble your potential advert, but one important consideration is that things need to be much higher resolution than for a web page.
Any colour bitmap graphics (like that background?) need to be something like 300 dpi for decent quality printing (rather than 72 for the web). And even higher if they aren't full ("24 bit") photographic colour. (GIFs are only 8 bit) And naturally, things will be crispest (at whatever resolution) if they are produced as vector, rather than bitmap, graphics.

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:34 pm Post subject:

All they said was half an A4 page landscape, so I took that to mean A5 landscape with a bit of a margin all round

Most of the pics are about 250k, thats all I have around so I was hoping they would be ok, left to their own devices they print out at normal poto size and I dragged them down to smaller in publisher. The background is in the publisher package, I have no idea how to tell what resolution its at

Problem is this has all been very short notice, they asked for an article two days ago with a deadline of tonight- that bit was easy, its just getting the ad to look at least passable thats giving me a headache.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:48 pm Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

All they said was half an A4 page landscape, so I took that to mean A5 landscape with a bit of a margin all round

Sounds reasonable!

sally_in_wales wrote:

Most of the pics are about 250k...
Problem is this has all been very short notice, they asked for an article two days ago with a deadline of tonight- that bit was easy, its just getting the ad to look at least passable thats giving me a headache.

Pics sound as though there's plenty to be working with (not from - don't reduce the number of dots, shrink them by changing the number of dots per inch)
If you can't find out about the background, I'd suggest using a plain tint background. (I don't know Publisher, windoze pah!)
Is the advert on the same deadline?

And what are those typefaces?

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 4:52 pm Post subject:

yep, its got to go this evening, the lady I'm talking too seems to respond to my emails about 10pm, so I reckon I have til then. I'm hoping I can send her the whole Publisher file and have them stick it all down as they see fit rather than having to save it as an image like I did to post it here, cos that makes everything go fuzzy.

However, I've just decided I'm not going to fret too much, an advert is an advert, and I'll treat this as a learning curve and see how it comes out

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:04 pm Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

yep, its got to go this evening, ...

AAARGH! You didn't say that earlier!

Yep, I'd say check whether they are PC or Mac,
- and if PC, just throw the lot at them, full res pix and all. I doubt they use Publisher for the magazine, (probably XPress or InDesign), but it won't be the first such submission they've seen.
- If they are on Mac, I'd send them your layout concept picture as here, typeface info (even the typefaces), pix as before, and the text as a plain text or rtf file so at least they don't have to retype it.

And the more you are leaving to them to tidy up, the earlier you can get it across the better (or the more time they might have to bother about it!)

EDIT : Uh-oh... Their PDF's of contents pages were created with XPress & Acrobat Distiller for *Mac*... Get in touch with them FAST.

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:10 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

sally_in_wales wrote:

yep, its got to go this evening, ...

AAARGH! You didn't say that earlier!

I did! Somewhere on page one. Anyway, they were fine with the article in Word, so hopefully they can mangle the Publisher file. Will zap it over nowish I think, I've tweaked a few capitals etc, and see what they say

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:11 pm Post subject:
Sally, can you print it to a PDF?

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:12 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Sally, can you print it to a PDF?

I don't think so. I emailed the lady first thing this morning asking for guidelines and nothing has come back, so I'll zap it anyway and see what they say.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:18 pm Post subject:
XPress can directly import Word docs (Mac or PC). But I don't think it can handle Publisher documents... ... I'm sure there are various pc shareware pdf printing solutions. I'm sure they ought to be able to place a PDF...

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 07 5:22 pm Post subject:
for example https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ dunno if its the best, but its free and respectable...

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