McCord Gallery & Cultural Center
A Welcoming Home for the Arts
A frequent advertiser in of The Regional News and The Reporter Newspapers. Usually advertising art classes or special events, during the holidays they would provide 1-4 pictures of items being sold at the Holiday Shoppe to showcase that years’ creations.
The Holiday Shoppe ads typically ran in the Gift Guide sections of the newspapers, provided 3 options for the ads – Black and white, Full color; or Spot color. McCord Gallery ran twice with both Full and Spot color versions. Full color is the first thumbnail, followed by a Black and Magenta version — this made it easier for the press system at The Regional Publishing Corp to print the product. The final thumbnail shows how the ad would have appeared in print, in full black and red inks.
A very festive ad…the color of the artwork, product, logo is tied together beautifully
— Illinois Press Association Judges
The effect was done initially by rendering the final full color product to grayscale, and going back in and manually toning and adjusting specific elements of the ad to have magenta. The more easily adjustable elements were the frame, the gift bow, and the logo. The trickier, but probably the most dramatic and fun part, was adjusting the bracelet to show the two distinct colors. As the vase was more just different shades of blue, there was no reason to really isolate a single part. But the bracelet had teal and purple and silver. I had to choose which parts would make the most sense to tone and carefully isolate and color in each loop and each part make it perfect as possible.
This ad was later submitted to the Illinois Press Association in the Best Spot Color Ad Competition, taking 2nd place in the 2014 Division G. Official contest entries and winner listings can be found here: IllinoisPress.org
McCord Gallery and Cultural Center
9602 W. Creek Road, Palos Park, IL 60464
708.671.0648 | office@mccordgallery.org
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 9:00am – 2:00pm | Saturday 11:00am – 4:00pm