NWRL Billboard

Billboards need to be readable from long distances for maximum effectiveness. The text needs to stand out more, but is currently bleeding into the background since they share a similar hue. Consider DARKENING the text, or lighting up the background color.

Increase the size of the birds (and their titles) dramatically, otherwise they look like random scribbles from a distance.

Try printing out the page and taping it to a wall. Then stand 10-15 feet away. Can you still clearly read it? If not, increase size of each element. If you run out of room, reduce the number of elements, to simply the landscape.

Also, try to take into consideration what it might cost to print DARKER background. I have no experience with this, so I don't know for sure, but I can imagine that a huge billboard would be very costly to print the more ink that is used. Dark/saturated colors tend to require heaver doses of ink (as several layers are applied).

Good luck! This sounds like a really fun project.

Hi Sara,

I very much like the mood of your work - there is a sense of freedom and open possibilities, it is unusual and matches the libraries very well - in an original way.

Yet I think for being a billboard, being read from driving a car (is that that purpose of the ad?), it fails in readability - even sitting before a screen I need to look hard to be able to read the text - and still it is hard to understand what the ad is for (without your explanation).

The main improvement will be to identify the key text, and make it large - so that it can be read at a glance. Perhaps this is "Northwest Regional Library: 1 card, 7 libraries". Also the individual library names will need to be bigger.

The second improvement would be to clarify the message - you don't say what exact card offers such great access (I assume it is card of NRL, this is why I offer to rephrase the message as above). And you don't have any contact details, which is odd - I guess you expect people to know where to look for these cards, yet perhaps it is worth including some kind of directions anyway, perhaps this would be a good text to exercise your small font skills on :)

Please don't be discouraged, I really like the general idea and the illustration you chose, you just need to spend that extra effort to make sure the "coin drops" even for the people who don't have time to observe the beauty of the picture :)

Best of luck!

The text is too smal and the message of the billboard is difficult to 'decode'.

Cant really fault this one apart from that text size! ...change that and it should be good to go.

Same as most have said, increase the text size and you have a winner here.

I love the originality of it all.

agree with others, Font size is the killer on this one.

Like some of the designs on here, the layout is great (definitely original) but I think you need some better typograhy (fonts) for the 1 card, 7 libraries text - it just makes a good design seem like it was done using Microsoft Paint when it obviously wasnt.

Aside from that, it looks great

I really like the concept for this design, but otherwise I can't really add as I don't know much about billboards. I am however having a hard time reading, either the too small fonts or the fonts which almost have the same color as the background...

if this was a print ad of flyer I would have little input, as its a billboard I think you make have to re-think. The key visual needs to do all the work, and as it is the7 birds are simply not engaging enough, and so the message of 1 card, 7 libraries gets lost no matter how large you make that message. Just remember people will have about 3 seconds to look, get interested and read message.

change the font size i like the idea behind this