Preparing an advertising portfolio of SPEC ADS may make you feel like an amateur but Creative Directors at advertising agencies have hired their fair share of budding copywriters and graphic designers based on SPEC ADS alone. If you're fresh out of college or just wanting to get started in advertising, this Q&A segment answers real questions people just like yourself ask every day.
Q: Some of my print ads are pretty simple and quite short and because they are text only, they only fill up a small portion of the page and therefore look a little 'blah'. I have used your idea about offsetting the page and using a designed background but there is still a lot of blank space. Should I just use bigger font?
A: Leave them alone. Making your font a larger size isn't going to fool a Creative Director about the length. It's going to draw even more attention to a short copy block. It's like when we were little and tried to write really big to take up the page when the teacher asked for a two page report.
Q: I am kind of struggling with other media besides print. Should I try and force an ad in a different medium just to be diverse or could I just stick with all print?
A: You need to have other advertising mediums in your portfolio to show you can write more than print. Most agencies handle a variety of clients and create a variety of materials for them. Showing your ability to write other mediums proves you can handle any project you're given.
I say all this with caution, though. You don't want to bog your portfolio down with every advertising medium there is just to show you can write it.
Be selective and realistic.
If an agency says it's looking for a copywriter to write commercials, you'll want to have content that's geared toward that agency's specific needs. If what you have in your portfolio is exclusively samples of print ads and candidates with your same experience have commercials in their portfolio, you'll be working at a disadvantage right from the start.
Never think of your portfolio as a completed project. Not only will you want to showcase your best work, you'll also want to gear your content toward the job listing's specifications. A listing for a copywriter to write commercials, for example, should attract copywriters with commercials in their portfolios.