Abstract: subjects with different knowledge background and working experience were asked to accomplish an experimental task of advertising design separately. Making use of the protocols collected from the subjects, the process of advertising design was analyzed from the cognitive psychology point of view,and the influences of subjects' knowledge background and working experience to the process of advertising design was investigated as well. The result showed that:(1) advertising design can be viewed as some kind of behavior of problem solving in which the task of design defined the initial state and goal state of this problem,and advertising design was to produce a draft of the advertisment undergoing series of cognitive procedure:(2) the experimental environment where the design task was wholly accomplished by individuals separately,the process of advertising design included three stages: defining the task,planning the project and working out a draft of the advertisment,this is the case of (3) subjects with different knowledge background and working experience demonstrated differences in aspects of using rules, defining the tasks and planning the project etc.

Key words: Advertising design, Problem solving, Protocol analysis, Cognitive process of design