Design vs Advertising - is there a difference?

I often like to use this illustration. You are driving along the highway and a billboard catches your attention. The billboard design jumps out at you. It is just so attractive. The colours, the layout, its luscious images. It leaves an impression. Once past that billboard, you are asked, what was it selling? What is the brand? Oh oh...if you didn't catch that, then that billboard has failed and the client's money just went down the drain on you.

A perfect example of good design, bad advertising. On the road driving past this, you may cause an accident while trying to decipher what this billboard is saying. 

An example of a good billboard with a clear message and branding. This is an idea driven billboard.

I used to put this slogan on my blogs: "Design Attracts, Copy Sells". While this is targeted at Art Directors and Copywriters, it may also apply to designers and the ad person.

Graphic design is the creation of visual order and meaning. It's about how shapes, fonts, colours and images all come together in a coherent manner to capture the eyes, one of your five senses. It is about bringing harmony and consistent principles to a work that expresses itself more than it expresses the organisation it represents. It's about rules.

Advertising is about disruption. It's about exposure in the marketplace that makes people stop and turn their heads. And once you get their attention, it's about delivering your message, which probably involves selling something.

These are two very different task with two very different objectives.

To complicate things further, graphic designers often work in an ad agency. Their technical know-how - typography, page layout, image creation and manipulation, design trending - are the same. They often graduate from the same courses and learned a lot about brand identity in the course of their training. Where they defer is in the approach to their work.

An advertising art director will be briefed to create a single-minded concept. He or she will work in a tight huddle with a copywriter and generate ideas that sell. Unlike graphic artists, the design is a means to an end, not the end in itself. When the ink dries or in this case the file flattened, it will be measured against the brief and the verdict will be if it could pull off the objectives set in the brief. Period.

The key word here is: Idea first, expression second.

To summarise, I would say the difference between design and advertising is as follows. One discipline tries to create order while the other is searching for ways to upset it. Design strives to express itself in ways that makes you smile while advertising strives to express the organisation it represents and pursue to persuade your mind.

So are the two in constant dynamic tension of two opposing principles? No. Good advertising needs great designs, but great designs must never supersede the advertising message or it becomes what I call "creative indulgence". And that may win you awards but that's not what our clients are paying us for.