Moved to the Crit Pit

I can't get past the grin on the professors face. I would have choose an image were the professor didn't look so… retarded.

Also, that girl in the left image seems to be starring in a direction away from the professor. Perhaps something more attractive caught her eye?

I'm presuming the girl on the left is the same one and its meant to be a before and after idea. If we could identify the girl on the left more easily, it might have helped promote the before / after aspect.

I dont know why, but the orangy paper at the bottom, and then the two rectanglular sections of the blue really bug me. Especially the overly creased paper texture at the bottom.

Maybe something a bit more subtle and more similar to the colour of the orange arrow

My thoughts:
It is quite busy and my eye doesn't really know where to look first.
The heavy drop shadows aren't that pleasing to me.
The logo in the bottom left is really having to fight to get noticed on top of that crinkly paper. What is the reason for that paper texture?
The professor's face is awful funny!
It is eye catching although I don't know if I'd stay long enough to read it.

It's kinda busy... and definitely the look on the profs face (as others have indicated) is very distracting.

Also... contests are fickle... who knows why they are picking the other one... or if real people are even voting and not just robots.

better layout. quite confusing but drives interest

I think it's got too much going on: blue stripes with stuff going on in them, an orange bar at the bottom with crinkly-ness going on, glowing arrows...

Your logo and call to action are getting lost.

for some reason i cant see your ad

everyone else does so im not sure hmm

Ditto with Pecchi, it looks like it's trying to pull it off some site and my computer times out.

I can see it in ie but not firefox.

Too many elements, too many effects.

The problem is all of these "accessories" are prohibiting the viewer to understand the message.

Why three arrows (concentric ones with outer glows) as opposed to ONE clear and sharp arrow?
Did you put the effects on the arrows because it was needed, or because you could?

What is that blue band with the abstract stuff doing for the communication? Would it be just as effective without the abstract stripes?
My guess is that not only would it be as effective, it would be MORE effective.

At the bottom you have all sorts of drop shadow on the text. Sometimes a shadow is useful. Like when you have that crumpled brown paper look behind it. The shadow sort-of helps set the text off, but the shadow is an effect of last resort.
A better solution:
Get rid of the brown crumple texture. It is useless to the composition of the piece, and it is useless for communication. Ditch the crumple and you won't need the drop shadow.

Overall, I would kick all of the transparancies and drop shadows to the curb. They clutter the look and confuse the eye.

The important thing you are trying to get accross (contrast of good school and bad school) is completely lost.
You need a CLEAR division between the bad school and good one.
A longer thinner arrow could be used as both a divider and as an indicator of upward movement.


Effects can be useful, but more often than not they are added for no reason (design-wise).
I understand the urge to "do more" to a piece, but when trying to communicate it is best to be clear, direct and clean.

I am guessing that this was done in Photoshop. In the future, try creating your work in a page layout program (like InDesign) or perhaps in Illustrator. Avoid the urge to use an effect for superfluous reasons.

I just don't understand what the two pictures have to do with "college search." I was trying to figure out how the two women (really, one woman) were searching. It's like you're showing the result, but the text is about the journey.

It's a brilliant spoof.

That's not really what you were aiming for though, I imagine.