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Creative Brief - Culture Conversion

We all know of the design and advertising being created for niche markets. Unless you are in the community being targeted, it can be hard to tell if that work is good or bad... or even effective. But when you’re part of the targeted community, you get the message loud and clear. Making that connection is the driving idea behind Atlanta-based Culture A.D.

"We work as a cultural conversion agency," says Culture A.D. creative director Craig Brimm. "We take existing creative and evaluate the viability of the message for the African-American consumer. If the concept translates well, we then create more targeted language and/or visuals. Sometimes it is just a nuance that could be offensive or a latent strength that could be maximized in editing to make a piece play better in certain markets. There are occurrences where the creative just doesn’t hit the right notes at all. That's when a rebuild is in order."

(right) Readers Make Leaders: Part of an urban literacy campaign, this poster sends the message that kids can maintain a "cool" image while expanding their horizons. Art Director, Designer: Craig Brimm; Designer: Jamila Caldwell.

African-Americans often have the sense of being "bilingual" - that is, understanding both mainstream and black dialects of English. "It's not so much another language as it is different pronunciations, syllable emphasis, phraseology, context, word usage and enhanced definitions," explains Brimm. "There are certain ways African-Americans do and say things within social confines that are perceived as comfortable and nurturing, or as we might say, feel 'down home.’ It's not just African-Americans that do this. We all have vestiges of these behaviors."

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Adult Advertising Tips for the seeker of knowledge

Adult Advertising Tips – Quick keys

Take a look at your drop down menus at the top of your desktop. Click on one and notice the characters to the right of the options. Those are your quick keys. By typing that configuration, you will get the same action to the left.

When you are rockin' out in Photoshop, there isn't time to keep going up to the edit menu, selecting copy, then going to where it will be pasted, going back up to the edit menu, selecting paste. F that.

Select your text or object, hit Command+C, or for Mac users, hit Apple+C. Select area to be pasted, hit Command+V, or for Mac users, hit Apple+V. Voila. Done.

I have had lots of folks say they never knew what those little characters were in the drop down menus. That is suprising, but true. Try them out and see how much quicker you can work.

Most quick keys are the same from software to software, but can differ.

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Adult Advertising Tips – .JPG or .GIF

Image compression is a huge deal for adult websites. Tours on paysites can be very graphics-heavy.

There are ways you can save your slices to crunch them way down in file size and preserve the integrity of the image.

You should save an image as a .jpg if it has a photo in it or a complex background. Basically, anything that isn't a solid color should get saved as a .jpg.

If you are using Photoshop's Save for web, select 2-UP so you can see the original on the left and the one you're editing on the right. Make sure the right image is selected and choose .jpg from the drop down menu on the right. I usually set my compression to 65. If your page isn't graphics-heavy, you can go higher. Some images will show degradation at 65, so you may want to bump it up a little.

If your image is solid color, like my logo for instance, save it as a .gif. Solid color has no gradients or halftones, hence less colors. Think of it as a cartoon or coloring book. You have lines and shapes filled with solid color.

Go back to Save for web and get your 2-UP. Choose .gif in the drop down on right. My logo is 2 colors. I can go pretty low on the compression. I will usually bump it up to 8 or 16 colors to keep the text from looking choppy. Determine about how many colors you have in your slice and set the .gif compression to match. 256 is the highest you can go, unfortunately (which is why slices with photos in them don't make good .gifs)

The file sizes will be much smaller when you save it in the right format. While you're tweaking your compression levels, look under the image and it will show you the file size at the current settings. Sometimes, I'll have a slice and can't decide if it would be better as a .gif or .jpg. I'll select one, then the other and see which one is smaller. That's the one you want. The file size will be bigger if you make the format render something it's not meant to.

Every site I do is hand cut and hand compressed. I take all of the slices in the beginning that are different. Figure out the format and compression and use that setting for each slice like it, carefully watching each one. Sometimes you need to give special attention to certain cuts to get the best result.

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Adult Advertising Tips – Live Area, margins and bleeds, oh my!

During the printing of your piece, the paper can shift and your art will land in a slightly different place in relation to where it will be trimmed. To avoid this from being noticed on the final piece, always be sure to leave the room for this shifting in your layout.

Trim - The size that your work will be cut to.

Margin - The area around the outer edge of the piece to allow for printer shifting.

Live area - The area in the center, minus the margins where important info should remain, not going into the margin.

Bleed - The amount of artwork that needs to "bleed" off the edge, over the trim to account for printer shifting. Usually .125" - .375", depending on pub.

When you have specs for any print piece, you should always have the above 3 sets of measurements, 4 if you have a bleed. MANY pubs do not supply live area. I usually have to call them and ask what they want it at. Sometimes they don't care, sometimes they don't know what I'm talking about. Amazing. When in doubt, I like to give it a nice 3/8" (.375") margin on a print ad that is around 8.5" x 11". If it is for an oversized pub, like XBIZ, I'll go up to 1/2" (.5").

A good printer can get up to 1/16 of an inch from the trim for things like business cards, maximizing your live area. For magazines, there must be a much wider margin - .25" - .75" from the trim - depending on the publication. Some publications will have different margins for the top and bottom (.75") and left and right (.5").

So, here is the formula: If you have an ad for a pub that is 8.5" x 11" at the trim and their margin is .375", all four sides with a .125" bleed, your live area goes down to 7.75" x 10.25".

In this live area is where you want to keep all of your text and important elements. The background (or anything that isn't important and can be cut off) can extend out to the trim, into the bleed if your ad has one.

Leaving a decent sized margin has other benefits. It will keep your text from falling into the gutter. That is the center where the pub is bound together. If possible, try to guarantee left or right placement in the pub. That will allow you to know which side is going into the gutter.

This is especially important when you are doing a spread and your text jumps the gutter. Make sure you leave the margin space. It will look odd when you print it out, but if you put them together and pinch them in the middle to simulate binding, you will see the text come together.

If you do have a bleed on your print piece, make sure to account for it when designing.

I'll get off my soap box now... :P

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