Print Ad Design: All About for Designers and Business People

Even though we are firmly rooted in the digital world, print publications are essential, even to the younger generation.

Between 18 and 23, a staggering 92% of young adults stated they prefer printed information to digital content because they find it simpler to read.

Research indicated that 51%–54% of millennials pay attention to catalogs and magazines, making them the “rising consumer powerhouse” and holding print ads in very high regard.

Magazine ads are a terrific strategy to increase brand recognition and sales. However, everything depends on a standout design that captures the reader’s attention.

We’re breaking down top print ad design examples for innovative ideas and inspiration. But before we go into that, let’s do a few statistical analyses to understand print advertisement basics.

Print Ad Design Statistics: How Impactful Is Print Ad Messaging?

Did you know that of all media, print advertising offers the best return on investment? The typical return on advertisement is $3.94 for every dollar invested.

When consumers are making purchases, print advertisements are the most reliable kind of advertising. 67% of Americans believe they still prefer printed publications over digital ones, while 82% say they trust magazine ads.

According to neuroscience research, paper ads have a distinct edge over digital ads in their capacity to engage with the minds of consumers’ thoughts emotionally.

We will perform a little experiment to see if this is the case. As you view the following ads in this article, try to gauge how you feel about them. Is it favorable? Would you use or purchase any of these items or services? How reliable do you consider them to be?

Before we get down to these ad examples, let’s check out components, why it matters, types, and tips that will put our print ads at the top list of impactful graphic design.

Components of a Print Ad

The basic building blocks of a creative ad include a background image, illustrations or graphics, your business name and logo, relevant contact information, body copy, a tagline, and a solid call to action. One app that’s an excellent choice for creating multiple layouts with different content or sizes is Adobe InDesign — part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. It allows you to adapt your designs to be used in various locations. 

Why Does Print Advertisement Matter?

In a world with great digital content, printed advertisements provide clarity, fascination, and memorability that is unsurpassed by digital advertising. For example, ad recall is 2.6 times higher in print compared to digital ads. Consumers are three times more likely to find a paper advertisement fascinating than a digital one.

The Different Types of Print Advertising

Print advertising is a fantastic medium for showcasing your products or services. You have versatility because you can select from a large range of channels. Having delivered more than a lakh print ad design in the last decade, we at All Time Design know by now what is the most sought after print ad designs from our experience. Some of the most frequently requested print ad designs are:

Billboards and Posters

Posters and billboards are the best ways to connect with potential customers who aren’t online. The Arbitron National In-Car Study studied billboard advertising and found that drivers respond well to them. Approximately 71% of Americans actively scan billboard advertising while driving. Of these, 58% were told about a gathering or eatery they eventually went to.

Newspaper Advertising

Newspaper print ads, one of the most traditional forms of advertising, can connect with various demographics. Additionally, it helps your advertisement overcome the average internet user’s 8-second attention span. Reading a newspaper typically takes more time than reading digital counterparts.

Magazine Advertising

National and local magazines are among the publications for creating print ad designs. Everyone knows publications, particularly those focused on fashion, demand aesthetically appealing print ad designs. This fits in with magazines’ general aesthetic, which is most pleasing to the sight.

Direct Mail Advertising

Postcards, pamphlets, and other direct mail advertising are excellent for focusing on a specific audience. You can send out mail that is highly tailored and effective at forging close relationships with your recipients.

The fact that most direct mailers are discarded is why business owners are wary of them. This is why hiring qualified graphic designers from All Time Design can come in handy. With our creative skill and mastery in using the software, we can whip up attention grabbing graphics for your post cards, pamphlets or any other print ads that will for sure grab the attention of your target audience and compel them to learn more about your product or service.

7 Print Ad Design Tips For Creating Attention-Grabbing Print Advertisements

You may make a print advertisement stand out from the competition and persuade them to pay attention to your advertisement by following the below tips:

Tip One: Leverage the Gestalt Principle

The human eye first notices an object’s complete form before detecting its component pieces. This is the Gestalt principle, which states that print ads should adhere to five principles:

• Similarity: When two objects resemble one another, people tend to see a pattern or a collection of related items.
• Figure & Ground: To give the sense of a whole, comparable elements are contracted with contrasting ones.
• Closure: When information is lacking, the brain recognizes the gaps by recognizing patterns.
• Continuation: Moving the eye from one object to another in an image by changing the orientation of the objects.
• Proximity: Items close to one another will appear to form a group or a unit.

Tip Two: Think About Spacing

It is impossible to overstate the importance of white and negative space. White space, despite its name, need not always be white. The phrase describes the area between design components. Consider the constraints you are working with while creating a print ad, and try to keep things open and straightforward. A cluttered ad can lose its power, but with the proper spacing, it can captivate the target audience or market and encourage them to interact with the images and message.

Tip Three: Keep Copy Concise

The copy requirements for print ad layouts are frequently stringent. This implies that you must be at the top of your game if you’re developing clear, concise, and authoritative brand copy. Avoid the passive voice and use strong verbs that express action and intent. Don’t forget that copy in advertising is equally as crucial as design.

Ensure it is free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Tip Four: Focus on Delivering One Message

A single message must be the exclusive focus of print ads to be effective. Unfortunately, ad copy jam-packed with several benefits and features has a disorganized, overpowering design that is difficult to read.

Instead of attracting the reader’s attention, this repels it. The best method for grabbing magazine readers’ interest and persuading them to read the rest of your ad is to use one message per ad. It is simple for the audience to comprehend the worth of one benefit or feature when it is highlighted.

Readers are more likely to remember your advertisement if it only contains one line of copy that clearly describes how the good or service will improve their lives.

Tip Five: Achieve Balance

A sense of balance in an advertisement’s image gives the whole design a sense of cohesiveness. One of the earliest and most effective techniques for attaining balance is the rule of thirds.

Ad designers center the primary focal point on the outermost vertical line and the center of the horizontal line by dividing the image into thirds, which gives the image more movement and intrigue.

Visualizing your layout within the grid is best, as this should help establish underlying structure and unity for design.

Tip Six: Use Hyperbole

Advertisers draw the audience’s attention and elicit an emotional response by highlighting a product’s advantages in a witty, intelligent, and humorous way.

Tip Seven: Make it Playful

The brain is wired to anticipate results. This enables people to foresee what will happen and how to respond to it.

Predictable print ads are often uninteresting because comprehension requires little thought. By making the advertisement a game, marketers may prevent this predictability by making the viewer think a little bit more carefully about the advertisement.

The target market or audience will be interested in the advertisement. It will interact with it to understand the advertisement’s message if it is presented as a game that readers can “win.”

Tip Eight: Make it Simple

Excessively ornate fonts or text styles should be avoided. The format used by most newspapers and magazines is typically the same: basic text in a standard size on a white background with no excessively serifed fonts. While you can stay creative with your headlines, make sure to keep your body language simple and straightforward to enhance the readability of your ads.

Take advantage of simplicity when building your story to create the right impression.

Now, let’s check out how some of the brands nailed these tips in their ads.

10 Best Graphic Design Print Ads

Let’s look at some of the most creative, absurd, clever, and amusing print ads that have caught potential customers.

Print Ad Design Example One: Faber-Castell

Pencils and other creative tools are frequently ingrained in people’s thoughts as inspiration sources and tools. The following advertisement was made with this thought in mind by the Faber-Castell pencil manufacturer.

It depicts an aspiring musician amid an “aha” moment of epiphany using the tip of a pen as a spotlight. There is no question as to what the theme of the advertisement is thanks to the tagline, “In every pencil, there is an idea waiting to be unearthed.”

Print Ad Design Example Two: Adidas

This clever and simple concept use of the magazine fold exemplifies how surface and space can be crucial components of ad design and messaging.

When a reader opens and closes the pages of the double-page spread for the Adidas: Forever Sport campaign, the images of fit ladies will stretch, lift weights, and do crunches, bringing the advertisement to life.

Print Ad Design Example Three: Volkswagen

Volkswagen’s ad agency, DDB Tribal, developed a print ad campaign highlighting the features and advantages of the automaker’s brand Park Assist system.

They emphasized the danger posed by the “tight squeeze” when two cars are parked nearby. The advertisement features a porcupine with a sharp back and goldfish in water-filled, flimsy sacks.

Although it appears inevitable that the porcupine will pierce one of the bags, the advertisement informs the reader that VW’s Park Assist technology ensures that nothing of the sort – or at least the real-life equivalent – will occur.

Print Ad Design Example Four: Sharpie

A Sharpie print ad created by Miami Ad School parodies The Rolling Stones emblem.

The tagline “It all started with a Sharpie” emphasizes this product’s durability and historical significance, which contributed to the development of some of the most recognizable images in use today.

Print Ad Design Example Five: Expedia

Three-letter airport codes are used in Ogilvy’s print campaign for Expedia to convey messages that readers will identify with the wonders of spending a trip in far-off places.

According to the legend, the inspiration came from a woman at an airport who had the IATA code “FUK” hanging off of her suitcase.

The message “Find whatever floats your boat” is written below as a passport-style stamp to create an original, amusing, and memorable advertisement.

Print Ad Design Example Six: Burger King

This illustrates how a negative situation may be viewed differently and exploited for marketing. Therefore, even though the advertisement contains some dark humor, it will stand out.

For the most restaurants to burn down, the fast-food giant Burger King holds the infamous record. The fact that they have been “flame-grilling” their meat since 1954 rather than frying it is another point of great pride for them.

What happens if you combine these two? Above is an inventive advertisement that DAVID Miami designed and created.

Print Ad Design Example Seven: Colorado State Patrol

A story may be quickly and effectively told on a billboard, and this poster justifies it. This one from the Colorado State Patrol is particularly poignant. Giving truckers room is not only a good idea, but it’s also required by law, as the ad makes clear.

Print Ad Design Example Eight: The Belgian League of Alzheimer’s

The Belgian League of Alzheimer’s captured memory loss wonderfully in this magazine print advertisement. The unreadable word was either brushed off or carried away by the wind. Similar to what someone with Alzheimer’s disease encounters.

Print Ad Design Example Nine: Heinz

The simple tagline “Pass the Heinz” has roots in pop culture so that it can be recognizable. It came from the well-known television program “Mad Men.” A series of Heinz advertisements featuring images of food but no ketchup is seen proposed by marketing mastermind Don Draper in one of the episodes.

What will he do next?

Saying, “Pass the Heinz.”

The idea was for individuals to fill in the blanks and connect the brand with photos of typical ketchup-paired foods.

Customers develop a strong relationship between the product and the brand. Ads based on the phrase were produced by the advertising firm DAVID Miami, which jumped on board.

Print Ad Design Example Ten: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS)

To understand its significant purpose, you must examine the ad attentively. The image is initially a little confusing, and you must search for the details to fully understand it. The impact astounds you once you read the small text, which appears to have been done on purpose.

What to Know Before You Design Your Print Ads?

An ad agency typically handles a print ad campaign, but your in-house creative team can also handle it with the right resources and preparation. Although if you don’t have one, an unlimited design service like All Time Design is a preferred and affordable solution.

Create a strategy for reaching your target audience before deciding how your print ads will fit into the overall context of your marketing plan. A creative director, whether on your team or at All Time Design, may assist in presenting ideas that fit within your business’s overall visual brand and personality.

Your internal teams or All Time Design will follow your rules when developing print advertisements if you have a distinct brand identity for your company and a brand kit.

If the previous ads are not convincing enough, check below for more inspiration to aid your campaign development.

Print Ads with All Time Design

Among many more, flyers, brochures, and catalogs are examples of additional print ad design formats. Professional designers with experience and knowledge in designing them make up the team at All Time Design. You may order as many print ad designs as you want for as little as $499 per month.

Yes, you may discover countless templates online to aid in the creation of your own. However, there is no assurance that they will be as well-done and high-caliber as when done by a professional. To get you inspired, take a look at a couple of All Time Design’s previous print ad designs:

Explore now, one of the cost-effective and flexible plans offered by All Time Design, to begin the design process of your project or job immediately.