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In all the excitement of posting and voting on ads for other sites here on SFF, I almost forgot about the possibility of advertising SFF itself! Similar Community Promotion Ad lists have gone up on all other graduated sites across the network, including several which might appreciate an ad for SFF.

Surprisingly, it was quite hard to find any existing ads for SFF which were posted in previous years. I poked around a bit in past Community Promotion Ads on related sites such as M&TV and Worldbuilding, but came up blank. I did find this old meta thread from 2013, but of course all the suggestions there are with the old ad size, and some of them are also out of date.

Is there anything I've missed? Do we already have a lovely SFF ad image somewhere?

If not, let's design ourselves some ads and get promoting!

Other SE sites where we might want to promote SFF:

  • Worldbuilding. As suggested by @SQB in chat, perhaps something along the lines of "build it here, experience it there"?
  • Movies & TV. We need to promote our site without trying to steal traffic from theirs, so perhaps something about sci-fi and fantasy books specifically would be appropriate.
  • Role-Playing Games. I don't know much about the subject of this site - suggestions welcome.
  • Arqade. Again I don't know much about the subject, so any suggestions welcome.
  • Aviation? As suggested by @SQB in chat, maybe something along the lines of "Fancy a change from planes? Try flying a broomstick instead!"
  • Any more? (Note that beta sites don't get Community Promotion Ads, so sadly we can't advertise ourselves in this way on Writers or Space Exploration or Literature yet.)

And just as a reminder, here are the requirements for Community Promotion Ad images on all sites:

  • The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
  • If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.
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  • Also related: Can we have a default Community Promotion Ad to use network wide?
    – Möoz
    Feb 5, 2017 at 20:41
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    I'm no graphic designer, but how about something on physics or any of the other sciencey sites (chemistry, biology, etc.)? They seem close to our topic. We can say something like "Tired of the real world? Try some fiction instead!" Or something.
    – CHEESE
    Feb 5, 2017 at 21:20
  • @Mooz Thanks; I'd missed that one. Still needs to be updated for the new ad size, at the least.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 5, 2017 at 21:21
  • @Rand Agreed, at least one of those (the one you linked, and the one I linked) is a dupe of each other, and I'm happy for both to be a dupe of this.
    – Möoz
    Feb 5, 2017 at 22:09
  • For Arqade, Movies, and other sites with wich we have or may have overlaps - the ad could be something like "Like Witcher games/LotR movies? Visit us to learn what happened in the books!", but hopefully something more creative :P
    – Gallifreyan
    Feb 7, 2017 at 17:40
  • I'm definitely interesting in more brainstorming on ideas. I've got no strong ones currently, but would be willing to make some more images if something inspires me. I feel like there'd be a stronger tie to spaceships than broomsticks for Aviation. Arqade and RPG both could have a sort of "Explore the rest of the universe" theme.
    – user31178
    Feb 7, 2017 at 19:59
  • @CreationEdge Possible tagline for M&TV: "Interested in sci-fi and fantasy? Tired of moving pictures? Come over to SFF.SE!"
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 7, 2017 at 20:02
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    I generally prefer enticing them based on similarities, rather than (even if unintentionally) suggesting anything against the current stack (like "tired of")
    – user31178
    Feb 7, 2017 at 20:13
  • @CreationEdge But we need to focus on the differences so that we can offer them something they aren't already getting on that site. I've already seen that ads for SFF which include the possibility of asking questions here that could also be asked there (e.g. LotR-based ads without specifying the books) are frowned upon at M&TV. We don't want to suggest the idea of taking any of their traffic/questions.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 7, 2017 at 20:19
  • I can see something like "Is your favorite movie based on a comic book? Discover the answer at SFF.SE"
    – user31178
    Feb 7, 2017 at 20:28
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    I'm really trying to think hard about how to promote SFF on Christianity.SE :-)
    – Matt Gutting
    Feb 9, 2017 at 15:32
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    @MattGutting Does this help? :-P
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 10, 2017 at 1:24
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    @Gallifreyan I suggest something book-specific, so as to avoid giving them the idea that we're stealing their LotR film questions. I came up with "Interested in the background of fantasy films? Many of the best ones were based on books." but it still needs improvement.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 11, 2017 at 17:03
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    @Gallifreyan - And one downvote. Perhaps a different design (and one not by me) might fare better
    – Valorum
    Feb 13, 2017 at 19:51
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    @MattGutting: think C.S. Lewis's Narnia series. It's fantasy with a Christian theme. Or his "out of the silent planet" series if you want a more Science Fictiony theme.
    – Mark Ripley
    Feb 17, 2017 at 15:51

3 Answers 3

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Here's a design specifically for Worldbuilding.

I've always loved our header image. I find it inspiring, and so I think it fits the motivation of going from WB to SFF (for motivation!). Plus, it looks like the winged creature is possibly creating a world in the scene.

I used the original theme images and font faces. (Spacing and the & will be different, since I did the type myself).

enter image description here

Tagline could be changed, but I like the idea of having it be succinct.

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  • 2
    it's marvelous how you joined those objects together! This deserves an upvote.
    – Invoker
    Feb 7, 2017 at 11:42
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    Nice. I've gone ahead and posted this on Worldbuilding.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 7, 2017 at 12:25
  • This might profit from an exclamation mark instead of a period, seeing how it's a command to get inspired.
    – TARS
    Feb 7, 2017 at 19:05
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    @CahirMawrDyffrynæpCeallach I've added a version with it. I'm not sure I like it though. I feel like the period is more collected and serene, and the exclamation is "trying to hard", if that makes sense. But, whatever WB prefers I'm fine with.
    – user31178
    Feb 7, 2017 at 19:50
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    I'd say less is more in this case. I prefer the period over the exclamation mark, and I think even removing the punctuation altogether would be even better. It still conveys the same message, and while not adhering to writing giudes, it's visually more pleasing (to my eyes at least, however, I only tried by covering the period with a small piece of dark blue paper).
    – user68965
    Feb 8, 2017 at 16:26
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    Yes, in lack of an exclamation mark, the absence of punctuation is probably preferable over a period. That period just looks out of place.
    – TARS
    Feb 8, 2017 at 17:16
  • Perhaps it'd look better closer to the "d", but I do like it here. Having a period has a certain impact, which is why Nike, Subway, Apple and a host of others do it with commands (and not generally ! or nothing).
    – user31178
    Feb 8, 2017 at 17:29
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    Great job! Perhaps this would work as a general ad for our stack as well.
    – SQB
    Feb 10, 2017 at 10:08
  • I think the text here will get hard to read if it's smaller. But this is sweet.
    – enderland
    Feb 14, 2017 at 2:29
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    Where did you get the image from originally? We might be able to use the same basic image with a different tagline for ads on other sites.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Feb 15, 2017 at 13:44
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    @RandalThor I cropped the site background header and spliced in the repeating site background.
    – user31178
    Feb 15, 2017 at 13:47
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    I think this image would also work well for RPG.SE, so I took the liberty of posting it there.
    – user2428118
    Mar 6, 2017 at 14:18
  • Do you still have the background image and fonts you used to make this ad? I'd like to make similar ads but with different taglines (for other sites than Worldbuilding). E.g. I was thinking "Come to the Dark Site - we have SFF" would make a funny and apt tagline.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Jan 29, 2018 at 17:45
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Here again without a period (since I can't edit the post above): no period version

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  • Much appreciated. But you might want to compress that a little to suffice the 150KB requirement for ad images.
    – TARS
    Mar 24, 2017 at 14:52
  • I know I took the art and re-used it, so maybe I don't have a leg to stand on with design re-use, but I'm very much against the design without a period. The period was an intentional design decision.
    – user31178
    Mar 24, 2017 at 19:07
  • I understand that, I just heard in the comments that there was demand to see what it looked like without. - that's why I hadn't uploaded it with size in mind. I changed that because I was asked to. --- Now people that are less visually imaginative can see what it looks like.
    – Julix
    Mar 24, 2017 at 19:23
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Material for ad creation

(in case anyone else wants to make an ad along the same line as CreationEdge's)

The background images for the site can be found here (header) and here (tile). I used these to create the following background image for ads:

ad background

This image is the right aspect ratio for Community Promotion Ads, but the wrong size. In order to turn it into a proper ad, you need to put some tagline on it and reduce it to 300x250 or 600x500 pixels.

I just used this to create an ad for our site at Movies & TV, using the Science Fiction & Fantasy title fonts Orbitron and Chopin Script for the taglines.

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