I talked it over with the team, and we're going to upgrade this to a full-page for the forum. It looks and fits better in the magazine, and it's pretty darn impressive that our forum placed one!!
JG, besides being a winning TT driver, is also an expert graphic designer, and said he was willing to lend his free expertise to help out with the artwork here.
@JG, any thoughts on what would look good on a page here?
Hey gang...
So, it looks like this is real, and I'm going to be helping you with the design end, although I think what we're dealing with hre pretty much designs itself. It's a strong message, and it doesn't need too much flash to distract from the sentiment.
Anyway, here's the good news: I'm going through the ad placements for the June issue, and because of the way the sizes and fitments broke down, i'm going to be able to sneak this in as a full page for the same price. I think you've earned the favor.
So I'll work on a rough and get some thoughts on paper and we'll go from there. You guys want me to just post roughs in this thread and we'll do this in the open, or do you want me to deal specifically with someone directly? I'd almost rather do it here, as I think I'l lbe asking man of you to track down some materials I'd like to use, if that's cool with you.
Thanks so much everyone. Very honored to be involved in this. It's a very cool way to connect with our readers.
I like the basic layout of the cornering Miata with text above and below. Here's a quick shot at adding in 25% opacity Challenge cars. Maybe too busy.
Edit: Erased some of the image overlap on the Miata.
JG Pasterjak said:Hey gang...
So, it looks like this is real, and I'm going to be helping you with the design end, although I think what we're dealing with hre pretty much designs itself. It's a strong message, and it doesn't need too much flash to distract from the sentiment.
Anyway, here's the good news: I'm going through the ad placements for the June issue, and because of the way the sizes and fitments broke down, i'm going to be able to sneak this in as a full page for the same price. I think you've earned the favor.
So I'll work on a rough and get some thoughts on paper and we'll go from there. You guys want me to just post roughs in this thread and we'll do this in the open, or do you want me to deal specifically with someone directly? I'd almost rather do it here, as I think I'l lbe asking man of you to track down some materials I'd like to use, if that's cool with you.
Thanks so much everyone. Very honored to be involved in this. It's a very cool way to connect with our readers.
Thanks for helping to usher, we need that on the staff side to make this work quickly! I think if you took a stab at putting together some starter options like you mentioned, and let some of us react/markup here in the open, we'd get to a decent consensus fairly quickly.
For my $.02, I still like the idea of the copy for at least one option referencing forum members choosing to put their event entries to this ad instead. I can't think of a stronger way to send the message that we want to spend this money on the hobby we love, and will be continuing to do so.
Here's another quick idea to add the mix. I went to my favorite photographers site to see about good options, saw this one, and realized it might be perfect since it's a forum regular driving their car (who also volunteers a bunch of time to the local and national motorsports scene).
original image from Steven's site.
In reply to bluej (Forum Supporter) :
I like it! Just needs some words on the bottom to the effect of who bought the ad space and why.
bluej (Forum Supporter) said:Here's another quick idea to add the mix. I went to my favorite photographers site to see about good options, saw this one, and realized it might be perfect since it's a forum regular driving their car (who also volunteers a bunch of time to the local and national motorsports scene).
I love this one.
I for one would never use a miata, but I also have no income and am not putting any money into this
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to bluej (Forum Supporter) :
I like it! Just needs some words on the bottom to the effect of who bought the ad space and why.
Yeah, definitely. Maybe because of the format ratio the pranciata goes in the middle with a band of smaller user member "motorsporting" images above and below.
Edit: I need to get a bit more work done in the next half hour, but then I'll take a stab at really laying this out.
edit again: going to wait to see what JG comes back with based on his comment below.
Would love to see our red & gray Miata from the 2000 challenge sponsor collateral as one of the images around the edges- you already have high res for this.
It's the NA with red top, gray bottom, and has me and CSmith in pic. The background is crazy busy though.
If it doesn't make it into the ad, I definitely understand.
I just threw that up there for inspiration (that's me driving my Miata). I don't really have anything to contribute 
Needs to be simple to have the most impact.
So I think we have the start of some pretty good verbiage between what's been here and some stuff Margie and I have been working on.
So how about this: Everyone who's contributed, email me a picture. Can be your car in action, you working on your car, getting a trophy, whatever. Fair warning, I think most of them are going to be used fairly small, so don't expect that everyone is going to get a sexy spread. But I'd love to include the actual people who made this possible as much as I can.
And I know this is going to be a complete CF, so please use the email subject line "GRM FORUM AD MATERIALS". Exactly like that. Verbatim. All caps and everything. Copy and paste it if you have to. This will help me organize the stuff as it comes in and reduce the chance I'll miss anything. Send to jg@grassrootsmotorsports.com. Try and get them here by this Sunday night and I should have something for everyone to look at early next week.
Will work on that tonight.
The tricky bit is all of the really good ones were taken by other people, which poses copyright concerns I assume.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Oh, good point.
secretariata (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :
I'm in for $50 towards that!
I just gave some $ for the ad anyway. It was less than I promised for Interstellar Sledgehammer on every page, but I will make up the difference if Interstellar Sledgehammer shows up somehow... 
If it becomes a "where's Waldo" search through the entire magazine that might be fun...
Is there precedent for readers who buy a magazine to pay to solicit advertisers to advertise in said magazine? Even if it's only first time for GRM, this makes me smile to think we're finding an unexplored corner in the GRM universe.
Depending on how things go, what's the cutoff date for running the same ad in the following month as well?
bluej (Forum Supporter) said:Here's another quick idea to add the mix. I went to my favorite photographers site to see about good options, saw this one, and realized it might be perfect since it's a forum regular driving their car (who also volunteers a bunch of time to the local and national motorsports scene).
original image from Steven's site.
If Stephen would give permission for its use, I think GRM (with its stated hatred of front license plates) should replace the license plate text with a GRM Staff sticker image (maybe flipped black for white) a la:
Stimulus check cleared the bank. Money sent. I've never bought ad space in a magazine before.
mid-engine V8 corvair motorsportsing 16 years ago probably won't stimulate any advertisers so i'll vote for pasting an Interstellar Sledgehammer bumper sticker on the centerpiece car.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Stimulus check cleared the bank. Money sent. I've never bought ad space in a magazine before.
Mine cleared as well, sorry it took so long I over bought on some bitchin GRM shirts and other stuff here. Money added to the pot
secretariata (Forum Supporter) said:secretariata (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :
I'm in for $50 towards that!
I just gave some $ for the ad anyway. It was less than I promised for Interstellar Sledgehammer on every page, but I will make up the difference if Interstellar Sledgehammer shows up somehow...
I'm humbled that you remembered Interstellar Sledgehammer , it means a lot to us
Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Stimulus check cleared the bank. Money sent. I've never bought ad space in a magazine before.
Mine cleared as well, sorry it took so long I over bought on some bitchin GRM shirts and other stuff here. Money added to the pot
Me TOO. Just one shirt and some stickers.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I'm not sure what we are getting, the wife said "OoooooooOOOOO" a few times while looking at the store and placed the order.
If a semi shows up I won't be totally surprised.
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