Advertising and Commercial Art
What the domain tests
Advertising and Commercial Art tests the purpose and structure of advertising, campaign planning models, media selection and the design of commercial artefacts: posters, press ads, hoardings, packaging and logos. Expect questions that ask you to justify a layout or media choice against a stated audience.
Core rules
- Definition: paid, non-personal communication from an identified sponsor, delivered through a medium. Functions: inform, persuade, remind.
- Planning models: AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action); USP (a claim no competitor can make); FAB (features → advantages → benefits).
- Ad anatomy: headline, subhead, body copy, visual, logo, tagline, call to action, legal or mandatory line.
- Media: print (newspaper, magazine), outdoor (hoarding, transit, bus shelter), broadcast, digital and social, point of sale, direct mail. Choose by reach, frequency, cost per thousand, reproduction quality and dwell time.
- Logo criteria: simple, memorable, scalable, versatile across media, durable. Brand identity is logo plus colour palette plus type plus image style.
- Copy: one single-minded proposition, short sentences, active voice; the headline should not simply repeat the image.
Worked example
Design a hoarding for a coaching centre beside a highway. Viewers pass at speed with a few seconds of dwell time, so limit copy to five to seven words, size the headline by the viewing-distance rule of thumb (roughly 25 mm of cap height per 3 m), keep contrast high, use one image, and hold the logo and phone number in a fixed corner. Media logic and legibility logic must both be stated: a handsome design no driver can read has failed the brief.
Traps
Cramming in every feature; a headline that repeats the image; no call to action; ignoring the audience's language and income level; claiming the ad 'will attract everyone'; treating a poster as a page of body copy.