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Minimalist ads are some of the coolest print designs around. By adopting a deliberate simple approach, the designer distills the ad’s message and must find the least-complex signs and words to communicate the concept. The resulting ads are often funny, like visual ‘one-liners’, sometimes enigmatic, and, at their best, are inventively lucid. This post brings together a collection of 30 minimal ads, a selection representing the best in this design form.
1. Google
This advert suggests how much simpler life would be if finding everyday objects that have a tendency to go missing were as easy as Google search.
2. Hospital Aleman
The simple colours and composition of this ad promote a health care plan for children.
3. Faber Castell
This ad hints at the colouring potential of Faber Castell permanent marker pens.
4. Lego
The power of imagination and the possibilities of the famous building blocks are represented in this ad for Lego.
5. LA Bicycle
This is a folding print ad for a folding bicycle.
6. McDonalds
This ad employs a simple yet suggestive design to represent McDonald’s ‘Wi-Fries’ Internet connections.
7. Orbit Remote Car Starters
A simple ad for a gadget that means you can start your car from a distance.
8. 95% Advertising Academy
The Advertising Academy uses a cool iceberg aesthetic for this pleasing design.
9. The Economist
The minimalist message of this effective The Economist magazine’s ad reverses ‘peer pressure’ to pressure peers’, encouraging readers to lead, not follow.
10. Zoo Bucuresti
A bear’s muzzle leaves a lipstick kiss in this ad encouraging love for Bucharest Zoo.
11. Veet
This ad for Veet hair removal products suggests hairless soap, and by implication a hairless body, is the best way to go.
12. National Environment Agency Singapore
The message of this ad is that smoking is prohibited inside Singapore’s pubs, clubs and restaurants, so smoke outside.
13. Vespa
This ad employs a sparse landscape and a list of suggestive words to advertise Vespa scooters.
14. Shamiana Short Film Festival
This domino motif is from an ad campaign promoting Shamiana Short Film Festival.
15. Olay
This ad suggests that Olay skin products can ‘undo’ the effects of aging.
16. Dulcolax
This ad for Dulcolax laxatives hints at pressure release.
17. Bosch
The copy on this ad states that Bosch cordless drills are ‘faster than you think’, as this unfortunate fly has discovered.
18. IKEA
This ad implies that IKEA’s assembly service leaves the customer free to enjoy his time.
19. Listerine
A speech bubble design reflects Listerine’s breath-freshening effects.
20. Oral-B
This is another ad for breath-refreshment, this time for Oral-B dental floss.
21. Veja Sao Paulo
‘Your free time goes by fast. Make good use of it’, encourages this advert with its truncated weekend schedule.
22. WWF
A game of noughts and crosses becomes a choice to save an endangered species in this ad for the WWF.
23. Sports Association for the Handicapped
This ad combines the Sports Association for the Handicapped’s trademark orange shoelaces with a design based on Rorschach tests, in which a subject responds to inkblot designs.
24. Hut Weber
This ad for Hut Weber shows how a hat can make all the difference in our perception of an individual.
25. Kapiti
This ad for Kapiti Designer Ice Cream highlights the dessert’s high-end aspirations.
26. Jeep
The striking silhouettes in this ad links Jeep with the wild and natural.
27. CNN
‘No story gets away’ from CNN International, as this web design image demonstrates.
28. BMW
This ad for BMW spares is extremely minimal, with the ‘M’ and ‘W’ swapped to convey the designer’s message.
29. Kunstmann
This ad for Kunstmann non-alcoholic beer highlights the difference in effect when compared with regular lagers.
30. Levis
A pure line drawing adorned with the iconic red tab represents Levi’s Slim Jeans in this ad.Tom is a UK based writer and designer who writes for a stockist of genuine Epson ink, toner, paper and other print accessories. You can read more of his writing on advertising and design on their blog.
Haha, the Lego ad is simply genius, definitely a look into the possibilities of any artist willing to take on the challenge 🙂
Man if more of the ads in the world communicated at this level advertising would be so much more interesting.
These are some very smart companies that don’t mind paying the high cost of this type of ad placement with such minimal but effective and rememberable ad concepts.
now if I could only convince my clients to engage in such campaigns…
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Thanks and Regards
Noel for Nopun.com
a graphic design studio
…. simple is best and still catches the eye too !!
Nice collection. Lego one is genius indeed.
Awesome! This is actually the first blog post I have seen that features print ads that are all really good. Most of the time six out of ten ads in such blog posts are actually good.
Kudos!
Lego is my personal favorite by the way.
Really cool ads. Lego is my personal favorite too!
Really impressive collection, thanks for share
The ads are very minimal and they prove to be very successful in capturing their audiences attention. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how much design is thought about it is the most simplistic things that do actually work.
I do particularly like the Lego poster however there are a number of posters on here that have also really caught my attention. The McDonald’s poster is also very clever and shows the companies branding really well.
I always find it fascinating that designs like the above are actually so so simple but I find them hard to create. I guess my mind just doesn’t think like that!
Awesome collection of minimalist print ads, so innovative & inspiring!! I really want to creat some minimalist design now!!
Thanks!!
My favorite would be the Olay print ad, the concept behind it is genius. It’s the simple message that hits a button for me makes a great ad. Nice Post!
amazing minimalist ideas.
Great and inspiring collection!
as your title said coolest these of all much much cool as print ads.