Poster Design Essentials

Successful poster design hinges on the ability to quickly and personally engage your audience and relay a message in a memorable and impacting way. In other words, poster design should be short and sweet. The following considerations must be taken to ensure your poster design is powerful and effective:

Big design grabs big attention

Your graphic elements and poster text should be large in proportion to your poster dimensions, no matter what the size. Your prospects are constantly in motion, passing your poster on their way to do something else, so it's important that they can easily read your poster text and understand its visual message at a glance and from a distance.

Less is more

Don't distract your audience with unnecessary design elements or text. Stay focused on your message and naturally guide the readers toward a desired conclusion. Many of the best poster designs use fewer than 10 words and only one (if any) image. More can be confusing, and simplicity matters; there's no reason to pack your poster with several images when one or two will do the trick.

Contrast your colors

Your poster design should include contrasting colors that do not blend in with the poster's surroundings. After all, you want your poster to attract immediate attention. This doesn't mean that you have to make your poster an ugly color; only that you should understand where it will be posted and ensure that it easily stands out from that background.

Be delightfully different

One of the easiest ways to help your poster stand out and leave a lasting impression is to incorporate a poster design that is nonsensical, humorous or otherwise different from anything else out there. Depicting things not normally associated with each other such as a baby and an elephant makes your poster design stand out from all the noise around it. You don't have to be extravagant to be different. Subtler elements such as a unique font or background or accentuating the headline in a certain way can do the trick just as well.

Drive a response

Always be cognizant of the poster's goal, and use your poster design skills to move readers toward the call to action. Whether you want your audience to call a number, visit a website or make a change in their lives (such as switching to green energy), your call to action should be significant and obvious in your poster design. Poster design is more than slapping a headline and an image on a large piece of paper. Aesthetics, copy, imagery and marketing prowess combine to create effective posters that drive response. Think about your audience and where your poster will be displayed, and consider the likely reaction. If it doesn't jump out at you, then go back to the drawing board and make revisions until it does. If you follow these poster design essentials, you have the tools to craft a winning poster that gets results.