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In 2015 we made ads for Writers to submit to other sites. In 2016 the formatting requirements changed and we made just two ads, one for Worldbuilding and one for EL&U.

For this year we've replaced my poor efforts on Worldbuilding with a new ad made by Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 , and Kit has resubmitted last year's ad on EL&U. But I'd like to do better.

Can we make the following ads? (Translation: can people with a better sense of graphic design and marketing make these ads?):

  • An ad for our technical-writing questions, to run on Software Engineering. I sketched a super-rough idea just to get the ball rolling. We will not submit that (that specific ad is terrible, I know), but maybe that gives you ideas.

  • An ad for our academic-writing questions, to run on Academia. We could update the 2015 ad or do something new.

  • Maybe an ad for our business-writing questions, to run on Workplace. Here's the 2015 ad. (I say "maybe" because the community there isn't big on ads in general.)

  • A general ad to run on SF&F. A lot of SF&F readers are also writers.

(Where else? Only graduated sites get ads.)

Anybody feeling graphically inclined? Please post proposed ads (300x250 px, or double that for high-DPI, and ensure there's a non-white border) as answers here.

Edit by Neil: Here are all the ads on their host metas. It'd help if people could upvote these, the ads need a score of 6 or higher to appear on the main sites.

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  • I still have the illustrator file for the Scifi ad from a while back. Will post it below for comment with the new proportions but I think it can use some updating.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 7, 2017 at 4:16
  • Hey, do we want an ad on the music site too? They have a lyrics tag there, we have a lyrics tag here.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:46
  • @NeilFein huh, didn't realize! That sounds worth doing, then.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:48
  • Monica, I edited in links to the ads for visibility.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 14, 2017 at 5:44
  • @NeilFein good idea -- that sure beats digging around in comments for the links.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 14, 2017 at 15:25
  • Added one for music, feedback welcome.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 18, 2017 at 19:27

6 Answers 6

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Here is my adaption with new hook for Software Engineering, which Monica put up in chat. Maybe you all can let me know what could be done better with it and I'll adjust.

enter image description here

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  • Thanks for doing this. At 50% the "fantastic writing" part seems a smidge small; can you look at ways to boost the font there? (Using three lines would be fine, it looks like.) . Also, I need to get you some better code; in the original "extends" hit the edge of the ad so it was truncated and that's fine, but this will make people twitch in its current form, I think. I'll ping you in chat.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 5, 2017 at 1:10
  • Try making that "extends GUIElement". Also, it's ok to remove the blank line between the end of the comment block and the line of code; that might look better here, and will give you more space to increase the font size of the next bit.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 5, 2017 at 2:23
  • @MonicaCellio - I'll have it in the morning ... well, morning my time, lol. :o)
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Feb 5, 2017 at 5:06
  • @MonicaCellio - Updated.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Feb 5, 2017 at 14:23
  • Nice job! Thanks for the update.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 5, 2017 at 18:02
  • 2
    Proposed on Software Engineering
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 5, 2017 at 18:08
  • Thanks for doing this! One suggestion: I understand the visual look you'e going for, but the code text is tough to read when shown at 300x250, the size it'll appear as. Can you use a more easily readable font?
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 7, 2017 at 1:33
  • Very relevant Meta thread: meta.writers.stackexchange.com/q/1271/18298
    – Wildcard
    Mar 7, 2017 at 3:38
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A couple of options for the Workplace site. "Designed" in Powerpoint using more or less the canned themes. Anyone prefer one or the other?

enter image description here enter image description here

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  • 2
    The blue/orange/white one seems a little easier to read than the purple/green one, but I think both work well.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 7, 2017 at 3:06
  • 1
    @MonicaCellio I agree that the blue/orange one is easier to read. Let's use that?
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:51
  • Yes, please go ahead. That one's nice and clear.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 12, 2017 at 22:19
  • @MonicaCellio Done.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 12, 2017 at 22:22
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enter image description here

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    For the SciFi/Fantasy site. Not sure we should be specifically advertising the Tuesday chat since it's not as active as it used to be. Suggestions welcome.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 7, 2017 at 4:37
  • Thanks for digging that out and updating it. I agree that the weekly chat might not be the best thing to advertise, but if you can think of other text that targets SF&F, we could use this art/layout/color palette.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 7, 2017 at 4:55
  • @MonicaCellio How's this?
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 7, 2017 at 18:38
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    Neil, nice! Maybe for SF&F specifically, swap in 'script writing" for "business writing"? (I don't know if any of them write films or videos, but they definitely talk about them so might have questions about the craft behind them.)
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 7, 2017 at 18:44
  • @MonicaCellio Good idea, we could stand to develop the screenwriting questions here. Done.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 7, 2017 at 18:49
  • 1
    Great! Let's give people a bit of time to weigh in, and if nobody else has any tweaks let's ship it.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 7, 2017 at 19:02
  • Hearing none... ship at your leisure, IMO.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:49
  • @MonicaCellio Done.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:51
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Proposed advert for Academia.SE. I don't have the font (or know which one was used for the 2015 ad). If anyone knows it off hand, I can change this to use it.

enter image description here

Here's a second try with a the school from the Main page of Academia.SE. It also has the required 1px (no clue what the other size is) border and I bolded the text to make it stand out just a little more.

enter image description here

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  • It looks a bit messy/cluttered. Maybe if you changed the grey schoolhouse to a different color? Maybe the red in the Acedemia theme. Or maybe just the original colors.
    – Cullub
    Feb 6, 2017 at 22:17
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    @cullub - Crud! I had pulled the image from the Meta side. I'll see if I can pull the same from the main site and create a new one.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Feb 6, 2017 at 22:19
  • @cullub - See the edit.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Feb 6, 2017 at 22:32
  • 1
    Love it! Worlds of difference! Man, I think we can just go post it now :D
    – Cullub
    Feb 6, 2017 at 22:34
  • Do we have anybody here who's active there? While one of us could create an account to post an ad there, it'd look better coming from somebody who's already a participant there.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 6, 2017 at 23:03
  • Well, I have an account already, but I wouldn't say I'm active over there. On the other hand though, there are only two ads on there right now, and a net of zero votes between them, so we don't have a ton of competition.
    – Cullub
    Feb 6, 2017 at 23:08
  • 2
    I went ahead and proposed it on Acedemia.
    – Cullub
    Feb 6, 2017 at 23:34
  • @cullub - Works for me. TYVM.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Feb 6, 2017 at 23:42
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enter image description here

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I went with a fairly awesome, though classic example for software engineering. It might also work on programmers, since this bit of code is pretty famous.

enter image description here

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  • On that's funny! (I hadn't seen that famous code before.) But I don't think internal code comments are actually on-topic here. Do you think you could tweak this to add a bad Doxygen-style comment up top? "@return a float", for example... see way too much of that.
    – Monica Cellio
    Mar 8, 2017 at 15:29
  • @MonicaCellio Really? I thought they would, at least in the case of open source code since many of those are the only documentation of the code, but I can see your point. Side note: this is from one of the unreal engines, it's for fast inverse square.
    – Jake
    Mar 8, 2017 at 15:42
  • 1
    Oh, I hadn't considered open source. Hmm, I don't think we've actually talked about this -- worth a separate meta post.
    – Monica Cellio
    Mar 8, 2017 at 15:51

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