The typical advertising problem is the situation where you have to present a product that has tons of competitors, but do it in a fresh new way. Honda, long a leading car manufacturer thanks to its many successful models, introduced a sporty two-seater called the DelSol. A friend had written these ads as part of a pitch and later brought them to me to spruce them up for his portfolio, and mine.

The headlines were all appropriately and wonderfully wry. Short and not so sweet, much like the car. What would be an appropriate accompaniment and not just a repetition of the clever copy? The idea of a bold visual approach was all well and good, but what could that possibly be?

From time to time, when I’m faced with a real puzzle, I like to remind myself to “trust the material” or go back to the source. In this case, the source is the product itself. So, that provoked for me the question, What is a good way of focusing even more attention on the product?

The solution presented itself as a sort of bleeding of the colors of the cars themselves so that they filled the whole world, or at least that part of the world seen in the ad layout. I believe the result is an eye-catching, bold yet simple layout that almost seems to say “more of a good thing is even better.”

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—These are spec ads, written by a colleague, intended as an introductory teaser campaign originally for the DelSol and then updated with the S2000.