We have one of those hot L ads here right now. We call it the 'milkshake ad' because it offers a free milkshake to readers of the Savannah Morning News. It's ugly and it looks like it is embracing whatever content it is next to. I feel dirty designing around it.

We had an almost-identical Macy's ad in Friday's Orlando Sentinel. (Sted "Ft. Lauderdale!" it said "Orlando!" Go figure.) It's hard to tell here, but the ad was two facing pages. The left page was a half-page color ad and the facing right page was what you see here, the "half-page/hot L" if you will. It gave some people heart palpitations ... but we all survived. It was tricky working the stories around the ad ... we decided not to jump to the page.

It seems impossible to "design" anything that works with that sort of ad. You just plunk some gray type in there and let it go, eh?

Apparently every paper in Florida ran this ad on Friday. The ad was two pages, one giant L. Deciding what to put there was difficult, but that 110 plus inches of editorial content was paid for by that ad alone. If we didn't have the ad, we wouldn't of had the space. So it's a matter of picking your poison.

Do people even wear coats and sweaters in Florida?

Are you kidding? Real Floridians pull out the earmuffs at about 60. :o)
(My first winter here, I was shocked. It was about 55 degrees out, I was outside working in my garden, and I realized all my neighbors were outside in parkas and earmuffs. I thought I'd stepped into a parallel universe.)

I still can't get over the fact that I can grill out and wear flip-flops on Christmas. Everybody does freak out when it gets below 70.

You betcha you can grill, you can swim, anything you want to do... in Florida in the wintertime. We pasty-white northerners (or repatriated ones, in my case) surely appreciate those Florida trips for that. I miss Florida....

Does anyone else find the humor in the ad juxtposed with a story on finding awareness in brain dead patients? Do advertisers who want these placements realize that the ad will be wrapped around something that may or may not be in line with their message? Just scroll up to the (I find) hilarious Thailand newspapers with news about the overthrow of the government right next to ads about loans, cell phones, etc. When the government has been overthrown by the military, the last thing I'm thinking about is my high interest loan.