From Website To Billboard

By Melody Roberts.

Out of Home Creative recently designed a digital outdoor advertising campaign for Alsum Sweetcorn, a local farmer’s market in Wisconsin. This was Alsum Sweetcorn’s first time advertising with out of home and they wanted their billboard advertisement to showcase specific products and a directional. Here’s how I transformed the look and feel of a client’s website and made it work for outdoor advertising.

I visited the client’s website (pictured below) to get a feel for their logo, color scheme, fonts and images they selected to represent their business.

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The key question was whether the existing website elements would translate to out of home. For Alsum Sweetcorn, even though their colors contrasted well, I did not feel that their fonts and images would be visible or legible on digital interstate billboards. After consulting with the client, they were open to something completely different for out of home advertising and other than what type of products needed to be featured, they gave me complete creative freedom.

alsum2I also decided to take advantage of digital outdoor advertising’s flexibility by designing multiple advertisements vs placing everything on one digital. I wanted a “brown paper bag” feel that you get while shopping at a farmer’s market. To achieve this, I used illustrations and warm colors that stood out against a neutral background. Although I had a certain creative direction in mind, there was no guarantee I’d find what I envisioned in a stock image. That was true in this case. In order to meet the client’s request and fulfill my concept for the campaign, I had to research and manipulate several images of watermelon, corn and mums into one image. For the client’s name, I did not use the font from their website but instead went with a script and two-tone color for a more personal and consumer friendly look. Normally I don’t suggest using a script font on billboards unless it can be used for one word and made very legible.

alsum3The outcome was dramatically different from their online presence (I can’t say whether it was because of this campaign but upon return to their website to write this article, I noticed their website has been redesigned with an upscale feel and is more user friendly). I normally advise clients to be consistent with their advertising across all platforms but in some cases a business’s existing online, print and mobile design doesn’t always translate to out of home. This was one of those cases.

alsum4I enjoyed working on this project and more than the final billboard design, I love seeing clients who utilize out of home advertising to their advantage. For Alsum Sweetcorn, a directional out of home placement allowed their target audience to know where to go to shop direct.

It is not every day that a local, first time outdoor advertising client will allow anyone to create an advertisement for them without any real direction and go in a completely different direction than what they already had. Luckily, I’ve had the pleasure to work with local businesses that have had a positive experience with their billboards because they trusted Out of Home Creative’s design experience in the outdoor industry.

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Melody Roberts is an OBIE nominated billboard designer and founder of Out of Home Creative, an outdoor advertising design firm specializing in out of home design for businesses, agencies, media buyers and out of home companies. Melody has been in the outdoor industry since 1999.


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