No matter how amazing your product is, the textures you use to advertise the product and to vend it in world need to be clear, concise, and show the product well. You're actually better off with a clear image of the product on a white background and two lines of type in the Arial default font than you are going all out on something "pretty." Regardless of your level of graphic design skill, there are some mistakes that designers make that probably cost them sales. In this blog post, I will take you through two ineffective designs (one ugly, the other trendy) and a third which I believe is more effective.
Design #1: A visual assault on the poor, defenceless eyes
Yes, my friends, there are indeed product vendors and advertising pieces that look this bad. But in the above ad I've tried to put in any style I find hideous, with a good dose of visual mistakes that completely wreck the intention of the ad. Because what makes something "ugly" or "pretty" is subjective, I'll save that for the end of the critique and start with the technicalities:
Stretched pictures
(Kala mentioned this, but I will again, because it's a totally avoidable thing that really hurts the look of the ad texture.) A stretched picture occurs when one takes their screenshot and resizes without keeping proportions intact. Holding down shift while dragging to resize cures this ill in Photoshop and probably other software as well. In Design #1, the poor model looks anorexic because her image was squished.
White halo
This halo effect occurs when an object has the background taken out improperly, possibly after the object was resized. In this case, the model's got a white outline that shouldn't be there. Take your screenshots in Second Life using a full bright white background to give you an easily selectable background. When "cutting out" the item in Photoshop, first drag a selection box around the item, then using the "magic wand" tool (with tolerance set to 1 or 0 and anti-aliasing off,) alt-click on the white area to remove it from your selection. The end result is a clean selection without any white fuzzy edges.
Horrible lighting
Yes, it's true. Second Life's lighting system on noon daylight makes avatars look like poo. The full length model shot was taken with force sun on noon. Very unflattering lighting. And the closeup of the tattoo/navel ring set? Taken at night. We can't see anything at night. I can't buy a product if I don't know what it looks like.
Unreadable typography
Here I've combined two things that guarantee no one will finish reading your ad: bright, "vibrating" colours and unreadable decorative fonts. When two colours side by side are similar value (ie. both would convert to the same shade of grey in greyscale) but different colour hues, they'll often "vibrate" on screen. In extreme cases, this leads to epileptic fits and migraines, in most cases, it leads to people not wanting to read the ad copy and they'll move on to the next vendor.
Also, there is far too much text here, and there's also a typo. Please spell check your advertising. Often a mistake is all someone will notice once they find it.
No clear focus
Take a look at the model's outfit. Why does she need all that stuff on if she's advertising a tattoo/piercing set? It's not even clear what she has to do with the tattoo/piercing, since you can't clearly see it at that size anyway. Are you meant to look at the model, or the close up image first? Or the type? The result is a visual dogs-breakfast that makes me want to look away.
Finally, some style/preference notes
Keep borders to a minimum. They're not a necessary design element. Avoid the system colour palette (in the above ad I used it exclusively.) Learn to use the colour mixer in your software of choice. Never use more than two fonts for ANYTHING, EVER. Never use the following fonts: Brush Script or Comic Sans (the first is almost impossible to read [I used it above] and the second is so overused it's now a joke.) Drop shadows, such as the one used on the price, aren't very professional and it's very hard to make them not look cheesy.
Design #2: A design-fashion victim
This ad, for the exact same product, is beautifully designed with a harmonious balance of elements and a universal aesthetic appeal. Right? Wrong. It's proof that something can be over-designed, to the point where it's possibly even less effective of an ad than the previous atrocity.
You might like this ad better than the first, but the first is actually better at communicating to the viewer (marginally.)
No face to connect with
It's a known fact that humans are drawn to images of faces. We connect with them in a way we don't with inanimate objects. Why on earth would you ever try to sell a product meant for an avatar without showing an avatar? A torso doesn't count. Seriously, when's the last time you opened up a First Life fashion magazine and saw clothing ads showing designer couture on dressmaker dummies? This is a subconcious thing, but it's important to understand: humans need to see a face or some kind of personality to connect with an image.
What is the product, exactly?
If Design #1 suffered from too much type, this design has too little. It's not even clear what the ad is for.
I can't read your uber-trendy font
Have I mentioned the benefits of black 14 pt. Arial yet? Well, that's where you start before you learn how to use typography. I can't read your almost-white font on a white background.
What the heck are all those icons?
Second Life does not have a standard icon set to demonstrate the permissions an item may have: copy, modify, or transfer. So why on earth would you try to include some? It's up to the viewer to try to decifer your cute little stick people when you could have just said "copy/mod/no transfer" in plain English.
My client does not want to download your white space
While white space is certainly a good thing, and allows a design some "breathing room" so to speak, never forget this is an online game. If you're going to waste all that space, you may as well simply crop the image down to 256 X 256 and cut my download time by three-quarters.
Style notes
The black and white image with colourization is so overdone now it's laughable. Please don't do it. Also, and this is my personal preference, those squarish fonts are also rather overdone.
Design #3: Simple but Effective
Why does this ad succeed where the others failed, in my opinion? Well, it's clearly labelled what is actually for sale, the price, and the permissions system. That's all someone needs to know to buy it. The product is both shown on an avatar, and enlarged so one can see the detail that really sells body jewelry in Second Life. The tattoo's become a design element but now you can also get a better idea of what it looks like. The font used was Futura, an old graphic design staple that's easy to read.
PS- What is the product in Second Life? Well, the navel ring comes with the Rachel avatar for sale on SLB, and the white ink tattoo is a prize in the raffle ball I have running in SKIN 2.0. So it's not a real product at all. :)
PPS- Advertisements were created by the critiquer for example purposes only and are not meant to hurt the feelings of bad designers, in Second Life or First.
10 comments:
Thank you for this article, it was very insightful. It will definately help me in preparing to open my store in the near future. :)
I wish they would fix the noon lighting, it's just ick.
I read the other article too...and you guys make some really good points. Great article.
I myself have been guilty of using whacky fonts in the past...but have tried to stray away from that and use more simple-easy-to-read fonts.
I think you hit the nail on the head....a lot of designers (especially newer ones) don't realize the smallest things (the background) can make a huge impact on your sales.
I think Ginny had a good idea for the longest time. She did these, what she called "cheeky ads" where it was an ad just for the sake of an ad. Something fun for her to do as a designer. But she did a "poster ad" as well. Which was the graphic that was put up on the for sale poster. I mean sometimes designers want to have fun and get creative...and I thought that was a good idea.
In anycase good article.
OOooh, lots of great points and even better - examples :)
The only thing I would add is that there are several other read-able sans serif fonts aside from Arial. Gill Sans is my favorite.
very true, i have recently redone all my clothing boxes to make them more simple and easy to follow. I was really guilty of the bad font, over done colors etc. I swear my sales went way up after i did it too haha.
I too have tried some different ad things, like elikapedka pointed out with Dazzle a double ad can be a good thing, I often like to post the acual image on the vendor people will be buying from, that way when they come in world they can easily find what they want, its familiar and reckognizable. I then usually acompany them with a more artistic ad; like my last clothing update i made a few catalogue looking pages and you could click an item listing for more details, and it brought up the actual vendor image you would see in world which contained all the information on permissions, additional colors etc. I found that to be pretty sucessful. I think the artistic ad is very important too, often vendor boxes arent very inspired and they dont always sell a product to its full extent, so i think the balance of the 2 is a very great strategy. I have actually taken to hanging up my more artistic ads in my store along side my vendor boxes, You see a dude wearing my pants and a shirt splashing in the ocean - you can buy the pants and the shirt in the boxes right next to it etc.
I have stuck to a fairly simple design for ads in my vendors at Xessories, but am going to embark or some new branding ideas and would love for some comments on my current ad designs that I use. Any comments are appreciated (I already have some ideas on what needs improvement)stop by my store or check out my stuff on SLX and SLB since they are the same ads. Send me an IM ingame or email me at vixen.d (at)gmail (dot) com if you like, I would really appreciate it!
It appears your influence is already being felt: http://liquidvelvetstudios.blogspot.com/2006/08/lisa.html . Here's to teh ripple efect of good design advice.
I'm glad people are reading this and learning from it (or maybe just identifying with my complaints about bad design, heh.)
I LOVED Dazzle's ads. The ones that were almost like a journal entry that told a story as well as showed the fashion. They were really well done.
I mentioned Arial as a font simply because it's one that's universally on everyone's computer. Most graphic designers hate it, as it's just a bad redraw of Helvetica. I like Myriad, Gill Sans (totally with you there, Kala) and Futura. But Arial's not a bad choice since it looks readable on screen.
I found this really helpful! Thank you.
Thank you for taking the time to make this article and the accompanying advertisements.
I suppose the subject has never really bothered me, despite a modest design background. I did take some advice to help in my own designs, however.
Excellent article!
Thank you for you straight forward approach to marketing as well as your lesson.
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