Billboards are the ironic piece in the advertising puzzle.  They are a forever effective element in marketing, but seem to forever be a struggle to master for some graphic designers.  For every great advertisement presented on an outdoor board, there are hundreds of grotesque monstrosities that are cluttered with paragraphs of information with red on black text and, somehow, three pictures of smiling families.  It’s these ads that give billboard advertising a bad reputation, but there are beautifully and concisely constructed billboards that really hit the mark.  It is through these great billboards that we can really get an idea of the key elements that form an effective billboard advertisement.

                There are certain successful campaigns that have translated so well onto the billboard format.  One that is most noticeable is the Chick-Fil-A billboard campaign.  While a bit unorthodox, and most certainly more expensive, the creative layout of their billboards certainly bring them bang for their buck.  Using their now infamous cows in a 3D fashion, they have literally placed life-size cows on the billboard painting a simple, yet comical statement onto the board.  On one such billboard, they used their humor-driven slogan of “eat mor chikin”, the words purposefully misspelled so as to reflect the poor literacy of the cows.  With three words and a single (though expensive, but not necessary) visual, the fast food chain has provided a powerful lesson in several key areas of billboard advertising.

                Firstly, the copy must be legible and easily read while driving down the road.  At the mercy of the curvature and allowed speed of the road, the driver has only seconds to receive the message from the billboard.  This requires the graphic designer to limit the elements on the board so the message is concise but still clearly delivers.  To be safe, it is best to have a maximum of nine items on the billboard, and that includes each individual word, imagery, and a call-to-action.  Chick-Fil-A executed this perfectly by using only three words and a single image.  The typeface is perfect as well, fitting the familiar style of the cows’ horrible writing skills, yet legible from the road because of the large size and the black-on-white format.  Combined with the hilarious and easily visible 3-dimensional cows painting the message on the board, the message is delivered quickly and effectively to the consumer.