Heidelberger Agrees with Lake County Right to Life

I'll say this once, and once only: Lake County Right to Life and I agree.

Lake County Right to Life says vote No on Initiated Measure 11. And so do I.

That's not a typo. But since Lake County Right to Life does such a crappy job of designing its advertisements, I have to step in and help.

Lake County Right to Life ran the big ad you see depicted here on page 6 of Tuesday's Madison Daily Leader (click the image for a much larger view... but do so at your own download-time peril!). As you can see, the graphic design is terrible.

• They fill a third of the page with the faint little crosses, which just don't have the visual punch the right-to-lifers think they do.
  
• The biggest text in the entire ad is the organization logo at the bottom. Anyone scanning the page would see that logo first and probably think, "Oh, the right-to-lifers. They must want me to vote yes on IM11," and move on.
  
• Nowhere does their text say explicitly "Vote No on IM11," which is exactly the message they are trying to get across.

Given the counterintuitive nature of that message (what? a right-to-life organization urging people to vote no on an abortion ban?), a good ad needs to make a bold statement to cut through that cognitive dissonance. If Lake County Right to Life is serious about getting people's attention and persuading them to vote No on IM11, they need a much bolder, more direct ad... something like this:
I'd maybe boost the font size and fill a bit more of that white space, but hey, I'm working for free here.

Graphic design, gratis. There's my contribution to the Lake County Right to Life chapter. Go figure.