Scary Bad Ad Design

› Published by

When you think of Halloween horror, you may think of ghosts, monsters, or haunted house villains. But here at BillboardsIn, the thing that scares us the most is unsightly ad designs. This Halloween, instead of watching your favorite horror movie, grab some candy and check out some of these chilling examples of what not to do when putting up an out-of-home advertisement.

Too Many Words and Images

One of the scariest mistakes a person could make when designing a billboard ad is cluttering it with too much stuff. As great as it would be to have potential customers read an entire paragraph explaining your business or product in detail, most viewers won’t take the time to do this—or can’t if they’re driving past! There are several metrics people ascribe to in order to determine the ideal amount of info to put on an ad, and one of them is the 3-second rule. This rule seems quite strict, but by assuming that your viewer only has about 3 seconds to look at everything on your board, you keep things pretty simple!

Irrelevant Information

This rule continues on with our simplicity theme—the goal is to keep everything concise and easy for a reader to digest, so avoid unnecessary information. For example, if you are including a link to your website, avoid the “https” or “www.” at the beginning—just the simplest iteration of your url will suffice (such as “billboardsin.com”).

Keep your message clear and straightforward—a distinctive call to action is important, as well as an unmistakable view of your business name. You want to give your viewer every opportunity to remember you after they’ve long passed your ad!

Unreadable Type Fonts

Condensing your verbiage is only half the battle—if you choose a type font that’s too difficult to read, you may lose out on a lot of potential viewers. Avoid super script-y type; bold block letters are your friend! Make sure your words are relatively large, as well (which should be easy to do since you significantly simplified your info in the previous steps!).

Want to Guarantee a Great Ad Design?

Here at BillboardsIn, we can help you design your perfect advertisement—check out BillboardsIn.com or email support@billboardsin.com to get started!