Magazine Ad

Our next project is to make a full page ad for a magazine. This is a pretty simple project for us, we have to pick a magazine, do a little research on their ad specs and make the ad. The main element that we have to put in this layout is a photograph and it has to pertain to the demographic that would be reading the magazine.

Before we start, while the designs were made by me, my magazine and store being advertised are properties of their respective owners. GQ is owned by Conde Nast and JC Penneys is owned by itself.

So as you can guess, the magazine that I chose is GQ. I kind of have a thing for male fashion this magazine is right up my alley. Combine that with an ad from JC Penney's (where I currently work), and you have a nice, fashionable publication on your hands. My target audience are younger males (18-25) who want to dress professional and stylish yet still have enough money left over to eat. In terms of a call to action I guess it would be the want of wanting to go and get a good set of clothes at a good price.

As you may or may not have noticed, no two magazines are alike. Besides obvious things like content, most magazines vary in size. Because of this, when working with a magazine its detrimental to follow their ad specs exactly. Most ad space in magazines cost huge amounts of money.

Here is a screen shot from the Conde Nast website that explains the rates for running an ad in GQ Magazine. As you can see, for one full page ad, for one issue, the starting rate is $161,437. Because of this price, you want to make that when you design your ad you exactly follow the specs of your magazine.

The picture above are the required specs for running an ad for GQ. The four columns correspond to a different part of the layout and the measures that are needed for it. This also requires a little bit of maths since you have to figure out the differences between different sections then find out what the distance is across the element. Bleed refers to the intensional spillover in a document or layout, this is done to make sure that the picture will cover the full spread and wont leave a sliver of white space on the very edge of the page. Non-bleed is how big our document has to be without the bleed. This is mainly useful for things like illustrations or anything you want to keep contained within the live space. The trim means how big the document will be after it is cut and printed. For lack of a better term, the trim is basically the document size. The last column, live, means live area. This is the area where your extra elements like vectors and text are guaranteed to print. You have to keep your elements contained within the live area or you once again risk having some part of your ad cut off or messed up. I feel like something like that is better explained in a diagram. 

Here is a visual example.

The picture above is the requirements for a digital submission for an ad. The file has to be exported as a PDF-x1a for must have things like CMYK only colors and embedded text. Requirements like these are more-or-less the exact kind of grading criteria that is used in our class. We have to make sure our colors are only CMYK or Pantone, and that our fonts are packaged within the final folder.  Since you wouldn't want to mess this up in real life and cost your company over $150k, you'd want to make sure you follow these instructions to the t (at least I think that's how it goes).

Before I can start brain storming I need to figure out exactly how much space I have to work with. Time to start the maths. The publication trim is 8" x 10 7/8" which is what my main document size will be. In the first column is says that bleed is 8 1/4" x 11 1/8". This means that a quarter of an inch is added to all sides, but instead of adding a 1/4" to one side I have to divide the quarter inch by two (1/8") and add it to all four sides. For live area, I have to subtract the live area (7 1/2" x 10 3/8) from the trim  (8" x 10 7/8"). In the mechanical requirements picture you can see an area where it says "SAFETY:All live matter must be 1/4 inch from trim on all sides." This means that your margin will be a quarter inch all the way around. So now that we have our document all set up we can start brainstorming.

I'm basing my ad around the phrase "Clothes make the man". It's a personal mantra of mine and I think every man who dresses up nice will have a noticeable gain in self-confidence. You dress like a boss, you'll feel like a boss. It's a pretty easy theme to visualize and it'll give a chance to be my own fashion model. I wanted to do something that would compare and contrast a "regular guy" and a "man" so a picture with a two-shot (two people in the frame) would be pretty good for this ad. For my thumbnails I have two people standing side by side, one man split in half vertically, one split horizontally, the man in the mirror, and a man with some girls while the regular guy is standing alone. I decided to go with the man in the mirror because that would be the easiest to shoot and edit.

Here is the draft I presented for the on-screen critique. What I did was set up a camera on a tripod and took two pics from the same spot. Me and regular clothes and me all dressed up. I went into photoshop and laid the mirror on-top of the one below it. I also did some color correcting to both pictures to make it blend a bit better, but left things like the mouthwash and sticker because I wanted to make sure people liked my concept first.. I ended up leaving my elements outside the live area because I thought it looked weird having the logos and text "float". After talking about it with my teacher and classmates I decided to put it in the right spot as opposed to resizing the whole document or something like that. My class liked the photo and the idea of the ad so it was time to do just a little bit of touch ups. Also, I'm a fan of minimalist designs because it's a talent to be able to convey an almost philosophical idea or premise with only one picture or a few words. That's just my opinion at least.

This is the proof and graphic of the final version. I went into photoshop again and removed the sticker (clone brush and spot healing), cleaned up my dirty mirror, edited, then covered the mouthwash logo, and moved my elements back into the live area. I corrected the colors again and I desaturated the "regular" pic while making the colors in the mirror a bit more vibrant. I was suppose to be a subtle non-verbal about how things could be a bit more boring with just regular clothes and a bit more colorful with nice ones. This was a quick and fun project to do.

Newspaper ad

Our next project is to make a black and white news paper ad for our school newspaper the “Collegio”. The first, obvious step was to figure out our dimensions, news paper measurements works differently than just a design you make and print. Instead of measuring width by inches you measure it by columns and just about every newspaper has different sizes for their columns. So that means if you have a 2x4” ad (.5" margin, and .125" bleed), its two columns by four inches. Not two inches by four inches.  These are the numbers we got for the Collegio newspaper.


1 column = 1.83
2 column= 3.79
3 column= 5.75
4 column= 7.71
5 column= 9.67
6 column= 11.63

We were given a budget of $197. Since running a color ad in the Collegio costs $200 by itself, we are forced to do a black and white ad. The other requirement was to figure out a demographic to sell to. Since the Collegio is only delivered within Pittsburg, it has to be a local business. I decided to do my ad for a fictional pizza shoppe called “Samurai Dog Pizza”. My last step was to figure out how big I wanted to make the ad. So, my teachers were right. All that “useless” math I thought I didn’t need. Well, I need it now. Here are the numbers and formulas I (and the rest of the class) came up with.

z columns (width)  by  z inches (height) = P

P  x  $4.00 = Cost

So since I decided on a 3 by 4” ad, this should be the cost of running it.

3 columns x 4 inches = 12

12 x $4.00 = $48.00

$197.00 - $48.00 = $149 that are left over.

With $149.00 left over, I could run my ad for three more issues of the Collegio. 

TL;DR (Too long, didn’t read): A 3 x 4” advertisement with a four issue run would cost $48 per week, and with a budget of $197 dollars you can run your ad for four issues and grab yourself some lunch for doing a job well done.


*Note: all the images were made by me, font sources are given a bit later.


My target audience was anyone really. I guess the picture and name of the pizza shoppe would appeal to younger people. But there's nothing really saying that only "20-somethings" are allowed to eat there. The call is action is your atypical "call now" but the coupons add extra incentive to come into the restaurant.

There are the sketches I drew, the different mascot and logo ideas along with a couple basic layouts I could do, I tried to stay within the 'Asian Pizza" theme. I (obviously) went with the samurai dog, and I used the japanese frame as part of the logo. So both pictures can be eye-catching and recognizable.


Since we had to have one element be hand drawn and turned into a bitmap, I had to retrace then ink-over my samurai dog. Here's what it looked like after I scanned it. Keep in mind, since I wanted to have the highest picture quality possible I had to scan the image at 600 dpi. That way I could resize it however I want for future use and it wont look all pixelated.

This is the inked version fresh from the scanner. As you can tell its a little rough and I sketched a bit too close to the eyes. Since I'm working in photoshop to convert it to a bitmap I can touch it up a little bit and it looks better after conversion. Thank goodness for the clone tool.

This is what it looked like touched up. I used the clone brush to add a bit more white space where it was needed. Used the paint brush to make some lines darker so they were more pronounced after the conversion. Sharpies can only do so much.

Finally, this is the bitmap that will go into the advertisement. In my on-screen critique version (which will be the next picture) I used a vector from the scanned picture so that's why it looks different.

This is my first draft, the classed like it for the most part. The biggest suggestions were to try it with a vertical spread as opposed to horizontal, and make the coupons have a dashed line, to imply (cut here). The font from the logo and phone number is called "Karate" and its from dafont.com, the one with the address and date/time is called Herulanum and its from urbanfonts.com.

This is the final version. I decided to go with the vertical look and dashed lines. I think my classmates were right in that it looks better. And I don't have to worry about people cutting up my art to get to the coupon. Since I went with a different layout that means a different ad size which means more math. Which breaks down like this;

The new image is 2 columns by 5.75 inches (3.79" x 5.75").

z columns (width)  by  z inches (height) = P

P  x  $4.00 = Cost

So since I decided on a 2 x 5.75” ad, this should be the cost of running it.

2 columns x 5.75 inches = 11.50 column inches

11.50 x $4.00 = $46.00

$197.00 - $46.00 = $151 that are left over.


$184 dollars spend with $13 bucks left over.


So I can still run the ad for four issues, and buy lunch AND dinner. Awesome.


The last thing I need is a printed proof to see how it looks in person. This project wasn't bad at all. Since I'm taking a class that is purely newspaper layouts, that helped me a bit more than I thought it would. I like knowing I have the ability to take my drawing and put it into a document without having the task of vectoring. I prefer a vector because I don't think I'm a good artist but if my skills improve I might use this technique more.