This ad is representing a product by Strike Industries which can be found on their website here: https://www.strikeindustries.com/shop/products/red-line/charging-handle-with-extended-latch-692.html
Strike Industries is a company that makes unique firearm accessories, mostly for the AR15 platform. They are well known for making brightly colored parts to accent a typically colorless firearm. This ad is made to show off how they stand out with one of their bright red charging handles that they make.
There are good principles of design used in this ad. It’s text is aligned with each other and either left or right justified. The varying size of text creates a contrast that helps you know which information is the most important and fluidly breaks up what you’re reading. There is also a subtle asymmetrical balance created by the repetition and placement of the color red. The black glove and rear sight also create a balance in the negative space.
This ad is monochromatic, using red as it’s only color. This makes it very obvious what the product being advertised is. The bright red stands out making the other objects in the photo less distracting. The red is repeated in the bullet points and the “red line” banner. As I mentioned previously, this creates an asymmetrical balance.
All of the font type used is the same san-serif, except for the text on the charging handle, and in the logo. The text is in all-caps which gives it a very loud and proud presentation of the product. The title is very large and bold which sets it apart from the rest of the text. The letter spacing within the characters at the bottom is stretched out which helps make it different. The sentences end staggered which creates a line that slightly follows the angle of the charging handle and helps lead your eyes back in towards the subject.
I took this photo at a similar angle and then rotated and cropped it to closely match the original ad. I recreated the red bullet points and “red line” banner to achieve that same asymmetrical look. All of the text is aligned in the same way as the original. I tried to keep similar size and spacing of each element. My ad is also monochromatic with red being the only color. I edited the lighting in the raw image to get the shade of red just right. I used the eye-dropper tool to retrieve the same hue of red as the original ad in the banner and bullet points.
I used the “Adobe Capture” app on my iPhone to look up the font in the original ad. The closest one it came up with was: “Revolution Gothic”. The fonts are nearly identical, but you can see the differences if you look closely at the R’s, and N’s. I mimicked the wider letter spacing in the bottom text and made the lines stagger in lengths to create that subtle leading line. I used some of the text found on the product page for Strike Industries’ curved fore grip. It didn’t make sense to me to make something up when the company provides specific information for it already. Here is a link to credit the info that I quoted. (Link)
To conclude, I think I did an exceptional job at creating an ad that would fit in the same campaign. They both follow the same principles of typography, color, alignment, balance, and contrast. They both clearly identify the brand and product. I enjoyed doing this assignment because I like this brand. I own this product and thought it was weird that they didn’t already have an ad for it, so, it was very fun to make my own.
Wilson Christensen 