Which ad do you think is better?

[Dave Gilbert]

I've been designing a web ad for Blackwell, and after going back and forth with several marketing people i've finally come up with a design i like.  However, the jury's out on the font.  Which is your preference?

 

One on the left is nicer, but the one on the right is a bit  easier to read.

[vict0r]

I would definately say the one to the left. The other one, IMO, seems too sterile.

[space boy]

I also prefer the left one.

[LimpingFish]

Left. I like left.

[ManicMatt]

I'm surprised the jury is out on this one!

Like everyone else, the left man, the left!

The right one looks too much like some basic word font, the one on the left goes with the picture and has style.

[markbilly]

Left. No contest. The other in boring frankly. Nice pic too.

And I second what everyone else has said.

[Darth Mandarb]

The font on the left has a greater impact ... but the greater impact is acheived by being slightly less readable.

Here is a simpler font (like on the right) with a little impact thrown in:


(I also removed the blackline cut-off at the top ... but that's just personal preference)

Easier to read ... but it's more visually eye-catching.

I love the saying by the way ... very intriguing!

Keep up the great work!

[ildu]

Never go with Arial in a promo pic, unless you wanna emphasize cleaness and structure. The left one looks more interesting, but I don't really like the formatting. Have you tried 'justify' on the paragraph alignment? I don't really like the text effects by Darth - I'm a minimalist in most things . A nice distinguishable touch might be to add quotation marks to the paragraph as if someone from the cast was saying it. You could also experiment impacting with bolding and resizing to emphasize the most important words.

[Meowster]

The left one has nicer font, but perhaps space it more and make it bigger... more suited for a banner advert that way.

Nice, by the way...

[SinSin]

I reckon darths is best now but the yellowy blur around the letters should be a like the dark red in the sky /background

[GarageGothic]

The left one, by far. But in fact, I find the lack of a proper background to be a bigger problem considering the height of the image. There's a lot of wasted space. Besides - what's with all this talk of a city without showing it? I photoshopped this based on the original cover art for the game. I also tried to distribute the text on four lines instead of three to use the vertical space better. (In my opinion it's also a good thing to show the plinth of the Statue of Liberty as it's part of the iconographic silhouette, and makes it look less like it's sticking out of Rosa's head).

        

Edit: Added second version with different linebreaking. Cheated the word spacing a bit, but it could probably be made to look slightly better by also fudging the spacing between the characters. I would make the font slightly bigger (wider mainly), like in the first example, but unfortunately I oversaved my layered image file by mistake and can't modify it further.

[cat]

Great edit, GarageGothic!

[Tuomas]

However, I think it would be relevant to consider the empathising on the word in the text. For example now that GG changed it a bit, it seems to cut the sentence betwwen city so and full of life, whereas, you might want to cut it at around "in a city - so full of life" or "in a city so full - of life" and then more importantly, if you leave the it's there, it basically breaks the tension building up while reading it. I'd go writing the "it's easy to" on one line, and "ignore the dead" or "it's easy - to ignore the dead". See, the way dividing the sentence into lines makes it point out certain things that are more important than others, in the way of getting people interested. The original too lacks the tension it could have, kind of. It just presents a sentence thathas no mystery or no tension in it. Like reading a dictionary.

[GarageGothic]

I agree with Tuomas, the linebreaking is important, and I'm a bit unhappy with the way I did it too - especially that it doesn't break after the comma. But I couldn't make it work otherwise with that font. With a bit of fudging, the ideal linebreaking would probably be:

In a city
so full of life,
it's easy to ignore
the dead.

(I like "the dead" being on a line of it's own, as it's sort of a punchline)

alternately:

In a city
so full of life,
it's easy to
ignore the dead.

For legibility these are probable best. On the other hand, unfinished lines makes you read on, which I think is also the case with the linebreaking in my edit. In addition, this way the less important words ends up at the end of the line, giving the start of the line more impact. (in a city, full of life, easy to ignore, the dead).

[LimpingFish]

I favour number 2.

[Steel Drummer]

The verdict is probably the original left picture, and I'm going to agree. I find that the right picture's font looks very unprofessional- almost like it was made by a 12 year old. I like GarageGothic's paintover, a lot. I like LimpingFish's as well, but GarageGothic's suits the game better, I think.

[MashPotato]

I agree with GarageGothic that there is a lot of empty space, so I did a quick rearrangement of my own .  I broke up the text (although that may have been set already), and brought it down so that as you read the text, your eye is lead to the characters, which is where the main focus should be.  The spacing's not perfect, but it's just to give you some ideas .  I also decreased the amount of black space at the bottom.



If you're only choosing between the original two, I also prefer the one on the left

[GarageGothic]

That's a very interesting idea, to move the text onto the artwork, MashPotato. But I think it would work slightly better if the black area on top was removed altogether and the sky extended all the way to the top getting gradually darker. Something like this:



I do prefer the original (and my own) version though, as it looked cleaner and didn't compromise the art. Also the red, white and blue (plus stars!) of the sky and text together is a bit too patriotic for my taste.

[vertigoaddict]

Left

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Maybe something animated?

[Buckethead]

I really like ProgZmax version. It really feels like an add and if you cannot read the whole text at once you might have the urge to watch for some time to see what it says. The site name is a little hard to read though.

[Andail]

GarageGothic's last version, trust me.

After all, you want to make some sort of cliffhanger, convey some sort of mystery, and his un-aligned typewriter font does the job perfectly.

Also, the first few versions cut the upper part of the image in a way that is totally no-no compostion-wise. The statue appears crammed into the picture, whereas GG's version is given lots of space. And that space, in return, is perfect for having text on it.

[Dave Gilbert]

Hi all,

Thanks for the great edits!  The reason for the black space at the top is that this is an advertisement, and it needs to grab your attention while you are looking at other stuff on the screen..  When the words are placed on the image itself, my eyes just ignore it.  With the bright white text on a black background, it gets itself noticed a bit more.

Did you use a special font for that, GG?  Or did you do some photoshop fudgery?

-Dave

[Kweepa]

I agree, GG's latest version is the best yet.
You can get several "broken typewriter" fonts from Darth's site (twin-fonts).
The bottom of the image still looks amateurish. If you had some way of continuing the image all the way to the bottom (with perhaps a small strip for the web address) I think it would be much improved. A drop shadow (non-directional) on the title should make it pop sufficiently. Use the same typewriter font for the web address, with or without the brokenness.

[GarageGothic]

The font is called Adler. I added a little bit of noise in PhotoShop, but you can't really tell the difference from the original.

[TheDude]

The only thing for me is that web address. I misspelled it about 5 times trying to type it in manually. Isn't wegames.com available? At least the ad will be clickable I suppose.

[MrColossal]

Thread is months old, TheDude...