Good and bad design

 Here is a billboard for an insurance company in Georgia.

Clean, simple... boring. While this billboard gets its point across, it lacks any visual interest. Especially when contrasted with this set of billboards from Nationwide Insurance:

This advertising design from TM Design in Texas is much more interesting. In fact, I'm sure it was shocking to people driving by. A large can of bright green paint spilling out of the billboard into the parking lot and onto cars and the attendant's booth. This design advertises insurance in a much more eye catching way.

The billboard spans the face of three buildings and seems to promote a paint company in the first one. However, the law of similarity, and even the law of proximity, create a three piece tableau that we recognize as one very large promotion.

The law of continuity plays a part in this advertisement as our eye follows the spilled paint from the can, to the building, to the parking lot and cars. And because of the law of pragnanz we conclude that even though the paint can is a 2 dimensional image, the paint that has been spilled is still coming from it. We don't over analyze the impossibility of this, we simply accept it.