When I first got into the advertising and sales side of the newspaper I didn’t know anything about anything. But I did know I wanted to make sure that we built our clients effective ads specific to newspaper marketing.
“Newspaper friendly” advertising is a stand alone subset of advertising, just like every social network has their own specs for effective digital advertising, and billboards have their requirements, and radio has their requirements. Newspaper ads that follow certain specs are more effective.
Why is this important for you to know? Because with the rise of AI, we have been getting many AI posters as graphic design submissions for advertising. As a jumping off point for our graphic designer this is fantastic intel, however as a carbon copy ad, these posters are not always newspaper friendly.
A few basic tips I share with people when they are considering submitting a draft design are these:
White space! Newspapers need white space. Too much of everything leads to a whole lot of nothing for the eye to focus on. White space allows your prospective clients to see your important messaging from a distance and draws them in closer to see more once interest is piqued.
Font size. The Free Press type font is 9pt. Advertising should be larger than this. In some cases much larger.
Font contrast. A dark font on a lighter background is the easiest to read. This is why newspapers are black font on white paper. Again this takes us back to white space.
These are the basics that I let people know about. This may mean that your newspaper ad is not a carbon copy of your promotional poster.
But our brand! You might protest.
Branding does not mean placing the same identical ad across multiple mediums. Branding requires you to ensure the big picture aspects of your company are included in all advertising such things like: colours, typeface, image themes etc.
You wouldn’t put a very detailed poster on a billboard would you? No. People driving at 70km per hour don’t have time to read all of the information. But you may put the same headline, with the same colour and similar imagery with a big bold company name. Social media advertising favours not just images but videos – branding may appear in the beginning and end of the video.
If you do choose to draft your ad graphics in AI here are some prompts I pulled from Gemini you could use in that will help make your ad specific to the newspaper medium:
Newspaper prompt guidelines from Gemini
1. Demand High Contrast and Grayscale Clarity
Phrase to include in your prompt:
“High contrast, strong key lighting, bold outlines, optimized for black and white print, crisp grayscale separation.”
Note: you can reference the same but in colour, the colour contrast will be more defined.
2. Enforce Simple Compositions and Ample Negative Space
Phrase to include in your prompt:
“Minimalist background, single clear focal point, uncluttered design, generous empty negative space for text overlays.”
3. Choose Graphic or Vector Styles Over Hyper-Realism
Phrase to include in your prompt:
“Flat vector art style, clean graphic illustration, sharp edges, print-ready layout, high-legibility design.”
One of the services the Free Press provides is graphic design. Our graphic designer on staff, has worked in marketing and has a degree in graphic design. She has a keen eye and great understanding of the importance of typeface, layout, and focal point. If you draft your poster initially in AI send it our way to be rendered into a newspaper friendly format. Provide us with a png or pdf file, unflattened so we can adjust to make sure you are getting the best ad that will catch the most eyeballs.
The fact is the wrong ad style for the wrong medium is ineffective no matter the marketing platform you use. Over at the Free Press, advertising is part of the full newspaper package and we want your ads to be as interesting and eye catching to our readers as our editorial headlines.
