The one on the right is cleaner (even if it appears to be allergic to centering text), the one on the left is better at presenting information in a way that people can find what they're looking for.
The poster on the left also has slightly better call to action (CALL 603-431-8560).
tbh, neither of them are all that great. The right one introduces a serifed font which clashes with the non-serif fonts everywhere else. From a marketing perspective, Akido is often associated with clean minimalism and serifed fonts are not.
The new design also uses generally smaller font sizes, which are hard to read on a poster. This allows for the use of white space to denote sections, but it creates so much white space that the designer struggles to fill it all up with something and introduces a new design element (the brushed circle) to simply fill up space.
Where non-serifed fonts are used, they aren't particularly readable, the kerning is off and the weight is too high in general. The leading is also off in quite a few places, particularly between the section headers and the first line of the serifed-font section text.
The call to action isn't very useful if it, for example, generates calls from people who didn't read the class schedule to know if they can even take the class. I didn't say "couldn't" because it's an important distinction to make between legibility of the words and our willingness to read them before taking action.
I can't speak to whether it would materially impact the effectiveness of the ad in generating leads, but an important aspect in soliciting leads seems to be filtering them. If your potential leads don't know what your criteria are, you're more likely to get calls from people asking basic information like when the classes are, or whether their 10-year old can join. If the ad were structured in a way in which class times and age limits were highlighted, these people likely wouldn't bother calling.
You can, of course, simply repeat the information from the flyer over the phone, but if you're wondering why these people are calling to ask those questions in the first place, you might want to look at your ad design. After all, the information is there. It's just that most people see your call to action before they see that other stuff, and so they just call you instead.
I don't totally disagree. But honestly, people are too lazy to read most of either poster. If the entire thing was just
"AKIDO"
<picture of one guy throwing another guy>
603-431-8560
it would probably work as well as either of these designs, and they'll end up answering the same inane questions on the receiving end.
More importantly, the questions people ask can be good signalling to a business how they can adjust their offerings. There might be an entire market of people who really want to take Akido, but they can only do it on Thursday nights. This poster might filter them all out. But a bunch of people calling to see if they offer Thursday night beginner classes might cause the school to adjust their schedule to offer that class, thereby capturing that part of the market.
The poster on the left also has slightly better call to action (CALL 603-431-8560).
tbh, neither of them are all that great. The right one introduces a serifed font which clashes with the non-serif fonts everywhere else. From a marketing perspective, Akido is often associated with clean minimalism and serifed fonts are not.
The new design also uses generally smaller font sizes, which are hard to read on a poster. This allows for the use of white space to denote sections, but it creates so much white space that the designer struggles to fill it all up with something and introduces a new design element (the brushed circle) to simply fill up space.
Where non-serifed fonts are used, they aren't particularly readable, the kerning is off and the weight is too high in general. The leading is also off in quite a few places, particularly between the section headers and the first line of the serifed-font section text.
Some more downthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9282032