I had the privilege of teaching a class of college students recently. The job was simple—come in one week and provide an assignment, come in a few weeks later and review the work.

I figured it was best to make the assignment pretty challenging. So I decided to ask everyone to create an interesting banner ad for a pretty tough client.

Not surprisingly, the class was a bit intimidated. Also not surprisingly, one of the first things a bunch of them said was “banner ads suck”.

A quick look around the Internet would make anyone come to the same conclusion.

So I was pleasantly surprised when the class ended up delivering some pretty inspired work. They definitely brought a fresh perspective to an ad form that is often pretty stale.

A few days after seeing their work, I came across this website.

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/

It is a great resource if you want to see examples of banner ads you’d actually want to click on. And it is further proof that any medium can be a showcase for great creative.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the students’ work on this site in a few years.

- TJ Bennett