Should television advertisers design to be "above the fold?"

  advertising, design, dvr, tv      0 comments    Posted on April 23, 2012 by Darin

Above the fold. Every designer has heard this concept at some point or another during their career. Sometimes as a constructive catalyst which prompts you to evaluate which content is really key for the end user to see first, oftentimes simply as a buzz word thrown around by executives and managers whether it actually is applicable or not. Regardless, every designer is familiar with the theory of designing your product within the bounds of the "above the fold" mantra.

For those that are unfamiliar, "above the fold" is a term long-used in the design world which originally referred to the act of printing the most important articles, photographs, and advertisements above the part where the newspaper is folded, as an incentive for the reader to open and explore further. Later, the concept became popular with web designers and content creators who aimed to place the most important content (or links to said content) in front of the viewer without making them scroll down the page to find it.

The evolution of this design concept makes complete sense, as most design and advertising principles apply whatever the medium happens to be. But, recently I've been noticing a new "fold" that advertisers have yet to fully take into account: the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) fast-forward interface.

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