Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
glimpse of your ad from the corner of their eye as they are reading
an article. Because the brand awareness campaigns for this particu-
lar client were successful, the viewer remembers the brand and
takes a look at the banner. With this banner having the purpose of
selling, users will no doubt see different elements and one of them
isthemessage.Thebanneritselfwillbemoreoffer-oriented,and
the message within will get directly to the point it
'
stryingtoget
across:
“
Buy this product!
”
or
“
Look at this incredible price! Now
buy this product!
”
Something to remember is that while sales-driven banners are
definitely harder hitting with less fluff, they should still borrow
some techniques from branding ads. Although they are highlighting
an offer or a price on the surface, they should still have an underly-
ing feeling of comfort and emotion that has come to be associated
with the brand.
Designing to Move
Standard Flash banners are usually constrained to an animation
time of 30
40 seconds. Rich-media banners, however, are most
often only limited on animation time up until a user interacts with
them. Either way, animation is one of the key benefits to using
Flash for online advertising and the design of that animation is just
as important as the design of the ad itself. The wrong movement
can make an otherwise beautiful banner look amateurish and
unplanned while the right movement can actually improve upon
the look and feel. Even the most beautiful car in the world turns a
little less appealing to some people if it doesn
-
'
t run well.
Visualize While You Work
A good practice to get into is to go ahead and try to visualize your
animations while you
re creating your design. If you come across
an asset that you feel would make a good moving part of the
design, you should also take care to consider if it will be possible
to make that piece move in the way it should. The only time you
want something to look like it has unnatural, clunky movement is
when the design actually calls for unnatural, clunky movement.
In most designs, however, you
'
'
ll want to try to create smooth,
organic-style movement to keep the work from looking like it
'
s
trying too hard (and just to make it look good, in general).
Some things to keep an eye out for when you
re planning ani-
mation in advance are moving parts, visual angles of photographs,
transparent areas, backgrounds, and several other similar proper-
ties of the piece in question. When you
'
re dealing with moving
parts of a larger object, are those parts cut in such a way that they
'
