Sizes, Shapes and Sundaes: The Building Blocks of Design

John Konecny – Senior Art Director

As it turns out, size does matter.

Shape matters too. And reference materials, resolution and visual hierarchy.

In case the title didn’t give it away, I’m talking about design and how fundamental elements and procedures go a long way in maintaining the integrity of a campaign. To improve efficiency and brand consistency, most designs are going to serve multiple purposes. Following these steps can help creatives ensure that they can scale and rework existing files instead of literally going back to the drawing board.

Go Big or Go Home

Most people have probably seen in movies where the hero zooms in on grainy security footage, hits “enhance” and has a clear image of the suspect they’re trying to find. Unfortunately, that magical enhance button does not exist in real life.

Images are composed of a series of square “dots,” and each dot is a single color. The more dots per inch (dpi) in an image, the higher the resolution. When images are expanded, the dots get bigger, but the number of dots stays the same. This can result in jagged, pixelated looks instead of clean, blended colors.

When realizing an ad concept, starting with the biggest scalable size is critical. For most campaigns, this will be a full-page print ad. Two-page spreads are not as common and at a different height to width ratio. Point-of-sale designs, like signs at a trade show, are too big and unique for everyday use. The final product should be flexible to the point where it can be quickly and easily resized while maintaining the integrity of the initial image. Working down from the highest resolution is the only way achieve that goal.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Maintaining visual hierarchy across sizes and shapes is just as important as image quality. The most important elements should draw as much attention in a full-page print ad as they do in a digital banner, and some of the more supplemental components may get cut from certain layouts.

Think of design like building an ice cream sundae. They come in different sizes and shapes, but the star is always the ice cream. A large sundae in a dish has plenty of room for hot fudge, whipped cream and other toppings to elevate the ice cream even further, but a smaller serving in a cone may only have space for a couple of sprinkles. Both options are delicious, and both fit better in certain situations depending on the consumer’s appetite.

In design, key messages and branding elements are the ice cream. These are the critical components that communicate the fundamentals of the ad campaign. Supporting messages and imagery are the toppings. They’re nice to have, but too many in a small space can be messy and take away from the flavor of more important details. More is not always more. A well-made vanilla ice cream is always better than a coconut, gummy bear, hot fudge, pistachio, marshmallow, peanut butter, bubblegum cone with sprinkles. A simple, well-composed ad will always be more effective than a cluttered, busy one.

Start out Strong

The ice cream metaphor can also extend to compiling design components. Using real vanilla beans and fresh cream is going to produce a better final product than artificial flavoring and skim milk. In the same sense, quality photography is crucial for creating eye-catching imagery.

Photography is an investment that almost always pays off. By capturing a variety of product stills, action shots, application examples and more, brands can create a library of images that are uniquely theirs and available to use in all advertising and marketing materials. Stock photos can be great, but in B2B, there may not be many options to capture the company’s niche needs. Everyone else in the industry has access to the same photos, and finding pictures that have been used across multiple brands is not uncommon.

Capturing professional photography also helps with scalability. All the details from a panoramic shot are not going to fit into a portrait ad. Cropping can be used to capture some of them in each layout, but having a variety of angles in the first place ensures that the full visual impact is felt. Including some extra space around the edges of a photo can also help keep cropping from cutting out key details.

Generative AI has been a useful tool in this area, as it can fill in some blanks between existing photo assets and what the design needs. It can expand the image or add background elements in a fraction of the time of doing it manually. However, the fine detail work is not nearly on par with what is captured in a photo. People can still recognize AI images versus real photography, and designers should avoid using them in focal points.

The Cherry on Top

Technically, all of these tips have workarounds. However, even the most talented designers would need hours of time to painstakingly recreate or manually adjust images, when having the right building blocks would enable them to do it in seconds. Offering quality input and following the proper steps for consistent, scalable imagery ensures designers can create the best outcomes and use their time to construct innovative visual strategies.