A Stallion Ad that Doesn’t Suck

FILED UNDER: Anecdote, Snark

1 comments

Sat

Feb 2010

13 Author: Katie

Site: www.gofreshdesign.com

Okay, I am a career Graphic and Web Designer so I'm a little overly sensitive to bad design. A lot of the Stallion advertisements out there make me cringe. They are generally made up of bad photoshop jobs, illegible fonts and photographs with tacky bevel filters or faded edges. You won't see any of that nonsense here.

This advertisement for two Friesian Stallions isn't perfect (the text in the bottom right corner's kerning is weird and a bit hard to read) but it is very nice. I think the copy is a little too cheesy, but overall it looks very professional. The composition is balanced and draws you to the center of the ad, the photos that were chosen are dynamic and the photoshopping on them is pretty spot on. The stock photography background that was chosen was a great selection. Even though I know the horse's photos are superimposed on the grassy field, it works and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb as do the backgrounds in so many other ads I've seen. This is how you do a good Stallion ad.

Photo Credits: http://www.friesianstallion.com/Site%20Images/ads/Spring.jpg

1 Comments

1

Quill

2013 07 08

I still don’t like it. Like at all. It’s better than some, but still a lot worse than others. It’s busy and cluttered and the font is way too hard to read. I find myself distracted by the bright - and totally unnecessary - flowers and straining my eyes to read the information rather than admire the horses. I agree they did a good job superimposing the stallions, but they need to get rid of the flowers and space the text out a little more, and find a better font to use. I also agree it’s balanced, but I think they should balance it with text placement rather than those silly flowers.

http://www.clarkrassi.com/updates/2012/nov3/IKON ad augsept12W copy.jpg
While that stallion should not have been bred for and should certainly not be breeding (his balls should have been removed the second they dropped) that is - compositionaly - the kind of stallion ad I like (and don’t you just love the way they tilted his side shot to make his topline look even? haha!). Simple and to the point. Not too busy, no unnecessary junk, easy to read, and we can actually see what the stallion looks like to see if we’d even be interested.