Charles Apple

Did you notice the big ad at the bottom of today’s San Antonio Express-News?

A stair-stepped pyramid. We’ve not seen one of these on page one just yet, but it joins the list of other odd-shaped ads, like the L-shaped faux news piece on the front of the Los Angeles Times back in April…

…or the Spadeas run recently by the Virginian-Pilot and the Chicago Tribune:

We asked design director Dean Lockwood about the ad.

He writes:

This shape apparently has appeared at least once in USA Today — at least that was the example we were provided with. This was the first time it’s run in the Express-News. Hopefully, it’s not a configuration we’ll have to deal with too often.

You’ll find this interesting: The Laredo Morning Times had basically the same ad today, but in a normal rectangle configuration:

HEB, Dean tells us, is the dominant grocery chain in his part of Texas.

The original desire was for us to wrap stories around the edges of the pyramid. But we have all that down-page architecture. We could have run all that under the ad. But we decided to just take all that stuff and use it to square off the ad.

The bottom of an Express-News front from last week:

The bottom of today’s page:

We asked Dean if his paper had considered any other shapes. He replies:

We’ve had some pop-up ads (a rectangle with the top of a car poking out) and some things like that on inside pages. We recently had a series of “checkerboard” ads: Three-column squares that ran across several inside wire pages. It created three-column islands for stories to “fill” in between.

This pyramid certainly qualifies as the most … unique configuation we’ve seen thus far.

We’ve seen checkerboard ads in our local Virginian-Pilot. The look a lot like this sample from the New York Times:

The Times, in fact, offers a lot of interesting inside shapes to its advertisers. They have stairsteps for single pages and double-trucks:

They have the L-shape, the U-shape and even a J-shape:

They offer a large doubletruck shape that’s essentially an upside-down U:

They call that a “fireplace,” believe it or not. But if that’s not exotic enough for an advertiser, they can parcel out a doubletruck into three tall columns…

…or, sure ’nuff, stack it into a pyramid:

Find the Times‘ helpful directory of “creative ad units” here.

Previous coverage here in the blog of “creative” ad shapes:

• Earlier this month: A spadea around the Virginian-Pilot.
• Last month: U-shaped magazine ads.
• April: The infamous L-shaped ad on the front of the LAT.
• February: An ad anchored in the middle of a page in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
• January: An ad plastered on the front cover of Esquire.
• Nov. 2007: Odd ad shapes on inside pages in Dallas and Fort Worth.
• April 2008: A heads-up that we’d be seeing a lot more of this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Industry woes, Innovative ideas, News design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.