There is an expression that states — that beauty is in the detail —and after working a little on the Moonlight Cinemas small press campaign, I truly appreciate what it takes to make, even the smallest of things in graphic communication, right.

As an intern at Studio Pip and Co., I was working on newspaper small space ads — I mean the size of two postage stamp for weekly screening times for Moonlight Cinema. This involves changing different movies titles for the week, paying close attention to ratings, dates, spacing and type sizes, etc. During a Moonlight season a new ad appears each Thursday to Sunday in publications like The Age over several weeks, across five Australian cities. With over 300 hundred ads in production it is little wonder that an individual ad begins to blur into hundreds of other ads.

After the ads have been designed incorporating their appropriate content, they are checked by three people within the studio, and then sent to Moonlight Cinema for approval. Upon approval each ad is saved individually, then uploaded to a special media placement website — another confusing task; there are so many similar looking files and if you weren‘t careful you could easily upload the wrong file or ad.

One of the many things the internship has taught me is how much work goes into producing small design projects such as a 2×4 inch mono ad. It was rewarding to finally see the ads printed in the paper. I promised myself to pay more attention to everything I see in future. That said paying attention to the detail in pre-determined moderation is probably a better idea.

Elise Lampe
Studio intern — December 2007 to January 2008
3rd year graphic design student — Monash University

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