Ad Layout Introduction Put it in writing The layout sheet Indicating copy and art The copy sheet Keying copy Keying art Other things about art Digital artwork How art scales The model release form Proofs Managing proofs Credits and adjustments More on adjustments The fastest way to increase sales! Participate in this award-winning, newspaper-specific ad sales course on-site or in a Webinar.  • Get past upfront stalls and objections without any pushing  • Make the account believe he really needs you  • Get better information from your prosepct  • Develop quick ad strategies that work the very first time  • Eliminate size, frequency, content, cost and most other objections before they ever arise  • Get dramatic responses for all kinds of advertisers  • Never have to push an advertiser to run again click here

There are a number of other things that you should know about artwork before you submit it with your rough sketch and ad reservation form.

Some forms of artwork are acceptable and some are not, and it will save you and your advertisers a lot of time and aggravation if you understand the differences from the beginning.

In general, art should be clean and, again, its image area should not be stapled, taped, written upon or marked in any way. The only exception is that at many newspapers it can be a good idea to write your name and territory number along the outside the image area if there is space to help it make its way back to you if it gets lost. But never enter the image area or it may be rendered useless to you and the artists.

It's always better to get artwork for an ad directly from the advertiser. This saves the art department the time of trying to find any generic artwork. Art from the advertiser will almost always be more specific and therefore more effective in terms of response.

For example if your account sells furniture, it's always better to get CD's, photos, and brochures from the account--perhaps those provided to him by the manufacturer--because your art department is likely to have only a limited selection of artwork of furniture that probably won't accurately represent the account's selection.

Often, artists that are not provided with artwork from the salesperson are forced to use photos or line art from art services. Line art, or line drawings of products, while it is often better than nothing, is usually not as good as a photograph of the actual product.

Line art typically gives the ad a downscale look. Now, that's fine if the furniture store is a downscale store and wants people to get the feeling from the look of the ad that they will get a deal.

However, if the store is actually selling upscale furniture, it usually will be able to convey that most effectively with photographs. Of course there are always exceptions and I'm sure there are plenty of upscale stores using very elegant line drawings in their ads. But in general, it's always better to provide the artists with more than enough artwork so they can select the very best images to use in your ad.

It's likely that your artists will be able to handle anything you give them, but ask around and you'll quickly find out the capabilities at your publication. Here are some things that most newspapers won't be able to easily work with, but will probably accept them and try to work with them anyway:

Prescreened materials, or artwork that has a visible dot pattern, can cause some problems. Almost everything in published form has a screen or dot pattern, although most of the time it's imperceptible. Once art is broken into a dot pattern, it can't be scaled down without pushing those dots together, which results in the dots filling in and creating black splotches in your ad.

Artists will try to salvage this by creating a second dot pattern on top of the first. This unfortunately creates a "moray" pattern, which looks like a "plaid" or chain-link fence pattern on the artwork. Your artists should be able to minimize this with their computers, however it isn't an ideal situation and the more of a dot pattern you see on the artwork, the harder it will be to work with.

Other types of artwork that are difficult to work with are tearsheets (art cut out of a newspaper, for example), faxes and copies made from copies. If your advertiser sends you a logo or artwork over a fax machine or asks you to take it from a tearsheet, your artists will almost always need to recreate the art. While most publications encourage their artists to help create and recreate logos and art when necessary, it is very time consuming and it would be much better for you to provide the art in any other way possible. This would include by digital means, which we'll discuss next.

Next: Digital art