7 Advertising Design Techniques for Small Businesses

Advertising is all around us. Even if you escape to the beach for a day, you might see small planes flying by to promote local businesses. In 2023, the University of Southern California estimated that consumers see as many as 5,000 ads per day.

You know that advertising is essential for spreading a message about your product or promoting your business, but standing out among all that competition is challenging. Creative advertising design can help brands create memorable content that captures their audience’s attention.

Learn more about ad design, including best practices for effective asset creation.

What is advertising design?

Advertising design is a subset of graphic design. Graphic designers create marketing and artistic assets for print and digital applications. When applied to ad content development, this process is referred to as advertising design. Advertising designers use graphic design principles like balance, proportion, alignment, and hierarchy to communicate information about a product, business, or service and spark consumer desire.

Advertising campaigns can take many forms—advertisements can be as large as a billboard or as small as a matchbook. Many print and digital advertisements are highly visual. High-quality, creative advertising design can help ads capture consumer attention—particularly when paired with effective copywriting.

7 advertising design techniques

1. Keep it simple
2. Make it interactive
3. Infuse emotion
4. Prioritize legibility
5. Stick to brand guidelines
6. Preview on mobile devices
7. Use negative space

Effective advertising design has the power to stop consumers in their tracks. The best ads use creativity, striking visuals, and clever copy to capture attention. These are some of the basic principles designers use to create successful campaigns:

1. Keep it simple

You don’t go on a drive just to look at billboards—most people encounter ads while they’re doing or looking for something else. Whether cruising down a highway or scrolling through their social media feed, they may only view your advertisement for a few seconds. Trying to explain all of your product’s benefits in one ad may be overwhelming. Designs with a clear and simple focus are easier to process quickly. Focusing on a single idea supports quick comprehension.

Here’s an effective ad design example. Volkswagen developed a striking advertisement focused on precision parking. This clever design creates suspense. The stakes are clear—without proper spacing, the goldfish are toast. Discussing product benefits outside of the parking feature they’re pitching, such as fuel efficiency or financing options, would muddle the message.

2. Make it interactive

Scrolling past an advertisement is a relatively passive experience. It’s possible for viewers to see an advertisement without giving your painstaking digital design much thought. Interactive content, on the other hand, engages audiences on a deeper level.

Interactive content invites users to participate in the ad experience. Burger King’s Burn That Ad campaign, for example, got users involved with an augmented reality experience. This initiative, used in the Brazilian market, invited customers to use the Burger King mobile app to take a picture of a competitor’s advertisement. After photographing, the app showed the competitor's ad burning away to reveal a coupon for a free Whopper. This advertising campaign offered a unique experience and a free burger to incentivize app downloads.

3. Infuse emotion

Stoking emotions may be more effective than simply telling a consumer what to do or listing product specs. Focusing on the consumer experience can help elicit a desired response.

For example, imagine an ecommerce company selling the most saturated red lipstick on the market. A fact-based advertisement might say: “25% more pigment than other leading brands” and show three uncapped tubes of lipstick for a visual comparison. To create emotional appeal, a different ad could use a line like, “The boldest red for the boldest woman,” accompanied by a photograph of a woman wearing the product standing in front of a desaturated background where all other red elements pale in comparison to her lip color. The second image plays on an emotional desire to be viewed as a bold individual.

4. Prioritize legibility

Clever ad copy won’t work if no one can read it. Typography selection, font size, and hierarchy all affect legibility. For clear communication, select an easy-to-read font. Design advertisements with display size in mind—this will ensure text is legible for small ads, such as on social media.

Hierarchy refers to text arrangement and relative size. Designers use hierarchy to organize copy so that important words are more prominent and supporting copy complements the primary message.

Here’s another example: In 2023, Spotify promoted its end-of-year Wrapped campaign with an eye-catching Times Square billboard. This ad design uses a large, bold font and prominent placement to call attention to the campaign name. The following text is slightly smaller; it adds appealing context without distracting from the primary message.

5. Stick to brand guidelines

Advertisements build consumer relationships. Sticking to your brand’s style guidelines by using established fonts, colors, and graphic styles will help create assets that match your company’s overall look and feel. This practice delivers a strong user experience. If a consumer clicks on your ad, the associated landing page will match their expectations.

Consistent styling also helps build brand recognition. Over time, consumers will get to know your signature style. This simple McDonald’s ad, for example, uses brand colors and the company’s widely recognized logo to create an instantly arresting and identifiable image.

6. Preview on mobile devices

Your audience will likely view your digital ads on a mobile device. In 2025, a Semrush report found that 81% of traffic to the top 100 websites came from mobile devices. Ensuring an effortless mobile experience is essential for digital design; if content doesn’t display well on these devices, you risk missing out on a large portion of your potential audience. Test your ad content by sending it to a mobile device to help make sure you understand the user experience—and that your design works for it.

7. Use negative space

In graphic design, negative space refers to the empty space between and around prominent design elements. Negative space can help draw attention to the most important aspects of your advertisement. It creates balance and harmony, and may even be as illustrative as your copy and art.

The FedEx logo is a famous example of designing with negative space. The empty space between the capital E and the x forms an arrow, suggesting motion, speed, and forward progress.

Types of advertising design

• Print ad design
• Social media ad design
• Display ad design
• Experiential ad design

The most effective design depends, in part, on the setting. These are some of the most common placements for advertisements:

Print ad design

Print advertising includes magazine and newspaper placements, direct mail campaigns, and outdoor advertising. Depending on the medium, print advertisements may be produced in full color or grayscale. Size also varies. A full-page magazine ad, for example, measures approximately 8.5 by 11 inches. Newspaper advertisements can be as small as one by two inches.

Successful print advertisements take scale into account during the design phase. Designers and art directors need to know the final ad size to plan for text legibility and design impact.

Social media ad design

Businesses can place digital ads on social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Each platform offers several different ad placement opportunities. On Instagram, for example, ads can appear in a user’s content feed, Stories, and Reels. Social media ads are often designed to mimic organic user content. Optimization is key; image specifications and digital design practices vary depending on platform and placement.

Display ad design

Display ads appear on third-party websites, often news sources or blogs. This category includes banner ads, native ads, and pop-ups. These are digital ads—users may see them on their computer, mobile device, or tablet. Creating responsive digital designs helps ensure ad content will look good in every instance.

Experiential ad design

Experiential advertisements involve audiences in some way. These ads are interactive and invite consumer participation. Experiential advertising can take many forms, both digital and physical. Designs are often imaginative and aren’t restricted to a standard format. For example, an ecommerce company could create an experiential advertisement at a pop-up event by installing a hedge maze with branded clues incorporating key product facts.