Eivind Bårdsen | Graphic and logo design from the Sunshine Coast

In this post, I will go through the steps to create this spoof-ad. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, it outlines the process that leads to the design production. As with any design project, good research shows in the final result.

Step 1: Analyse the company you’re going to spoof

The goal is to come up with ideas to criticise an aspect of the company or industry it belongs to. This can be about the consequences of advertising, the manufacturing process, health issues or social issues.

For my spoof ad, I chose VISA’s ‘Life takes Visa’ campaign. I wanted to focus on credit card debt, and the problems it can cause.

Step 2: Analyse the company’s advertising ‘house style’

Now on to the fun bit. We have to analyse the ads in the original campaign to look for consistencies and how different design elements have been used. Here is a sample of ads from the campaign:

Some ads from the original Visa campaign

When we have a few ads, it’s time to answer some questions about them:

• Is the product evident in the ads?
• What are the consistencies in layout?
• What images are used? Are they the dominant elements?
• What sort of typography is used?
• What are the consistencies in other elements such as lighting and colour?

I answered some of those questions by laying a tracing paper over one of the ads and pointing at different elements.

Using tracing paper, you can point out different elements in the design

Things that I found consistent were the centered lighting, the placement of the type, that there is a main image in the centre of the image and that the anchor text clarifies the meaning of the image.

Step 3: Ideas and sketching

Now that we know the issues with the company or industry and their campaign’s house style, we can move on to idea generation and sketching. Here are a few of my ideas from my journal:

A few simple sketches

Once you have a few good ideas, you can flesh them out a bit and start the final step.

Step 4: Producing the design

This is where you use the design elements and layout consistencies you discovered in step 2 to produce the final ad or ads. I will not go into detail here, because all spoof-ad projects are different.

Step 5: Evaluate

Often when we design something, we have to explain our choices to a client, or in my case, my tutor at the university. This is an excellent opportunity to show that we understand the principles of good design and have made our choices based on our knowledge, and not just ‘because green is a cool colour’.

In my case, I covered my final ads with tracing paper (Ok, I was out of tracing paper so I used baking paper instead) to show that I used elements from the original ad:

Showing my thoughts on a piece of baking paper

As we can see, 3 out of the 5 steps includes research. My tutor liked my work, and noted that the amount of research I had put into the project showed in the final result, and in the grade. Here is my final result:

My finished spoof-ads: The rat race and the coffin.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments!