Designing an Ad Is Fun!

As I may have mentioned a time or two, I was a professional artist a lifetime ago. My specialty was fashion illustration. I worked in the advertising department of a large department store in Minneapolis, where I grew up, went to art school, married and had my kids. I was a finishing artist. That is, I did the actual pen and ink drawing for an ad, working from a layout designed by, you guessed it, a layout artist. There were also copywriters who wrote the advertisement text and copy & paste-up experts who carefully pasted the completed artwork and text portions together on heavy white paper, which was sent to the printer. I enjoyed my role as illustrator, but I always kind of wished I could try my hand at laying out the ad design. Nowadays, I can do it all right here on my laptop, and you know what, it’s fun. I had a blast laying out this ad to be featured in a program for a writers conference. I liked it better in color but it’s not bad in grayscale. What do you think?