An Easy Way To Design Ads.

When it comes to designing advertisements - There's one rule of thumb to rule them all.

It's the design technique I use with all of my clients - it's brain-dead simple, effective almost every time - and it works in every market, and every visual medium. So it doesn't matter if you're designing a blog, website, piece of direct mail, or advertisement, this will work for you.

And I'm going to show you three examples of this one idea in action that was used to create a label, a blog, and a Facebook ad. And you’ll see how easy it is to implement anything related to design.

The big idea is simple.

Understand how the readers’ eyes will act when they read your ad. When their eyes hit the page or screen, they automatically scan the page the same way. They start at the upper left, move to the right, and scan down the page in a Z shape.

Why is this important? Because if you know how the reader's eyes want to move, you can use that to your advantage.

You can put crucial information along this Z.

Look, I'll show you.

Let's label the corners, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Behold, my MSPaint art, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Wix Ad Example

Here’s a Wix ad that ran on Facebook some time ago.

Now let's draw a Z over this ad – and you'll see exactly why they designed it the way they did. 

1 – In the very upper left, they have the headline – Do it yourself website. They put the headline in the spot they know your eyes naturally want to look.  

2 – Now look, as your eye moves to the right, in the upper right they put this cute little character. 

And look at its hands, it's pointing down to the left, which helps form a Z shape in the ad. See, even though they didn't put any crucial information here, they used this space to help your eye move through the rest of the ad. 

We need to pause and take a second to notice the browser image used in the ad. See how it's tilted? Now they could have made it a square and straightened it out. But they didn't. 

They tilted it because that's how your eyes want to move. 

3-4) Then they have apps logos, and the dotted line all line up with the bottom line of the Z. And by the time you've reached the bottom right corner, your eyes, your brain went through the entire ad. 

MusclePharm Example

Let’s look at two different examples of the same product from the same company. You see, I first wrote this piece years ago and since then some of the original examples have changed.

So we’re going to look at the design of MusclePharm’s protein powder and see how it changed over the years.

1) The brand and the UFC sponsor tag are in the #1 spot. 

2) And as your eyes move to the right they are met by a bright green logo.

3) Just like the Wix ad. The logo leads your eye further down the Z path. Then at the bottom BAM! Green Text with all the important info. Go to the medicine aisle of your grocery store, look at the packaging on the supplements, the vitamins, hell look at everything. You'll see that not all packaging is this obvious, but almost all of them use the Rule of Z in some way or another.

Here is their updated packaging.

Now instead of labeling each part, notice where the crucial information is.

• Brand and logo in bright green in the upper left.

• The grams per scoop in the bottom left.

• The flavor in the bottom right.

There is one more thing I want to show you. In the upper right, they tilt the logo so it guides you down the Z path.

Meaning with all of their changes, they still kept this element the same between both designs.

Here are two bags of dog food. Now before we break it down. The first thing you have to keep in mind is when it comes to bags on a shelf, is the top is not the top.

A bag is not a screen, you do not want to put the crucial info at the top of the bag.

Why?

Because the top of the bag is not easily viewable on the shelf.

If the bag is small and on the top shelf, the top is out of view for most people.

If the bag is medium sized and rests on a middle shelf, the top of the bag will bend back as it hits the shelf above.

If the bag is big and on the bottom shelf, the bag lies flat and the top of the bag is hidden away near the back.

Let’s look at the Z.

1) An image of the ingredients. Look how tasty these ingredients look, and notice how both the ingredients and the words are slanted towards the top right.

2) This is where we see what type of dog food it is, and for what type of dog.

3) A pleasant image of a dog with their person and a testimonial on the only spot on the bag with a white background.

4) The benefits list.

Something of note here is these bags are designed in a way that someone who doesn’t read English can basically understand what’s going on.

And no, people probably aren’t going to stop and read the benefits list while they’re shopping. They will look at points 1 & 2 though.

They are only going to read the benefits and absorb the information on a day to day basis, every time they scoop food out of the bag there’s a chance they internalize the food’s benefits.