Want to improve your poster design today? And create effective poster design? These 5 design secrets will get you well on your way to becoming a better poster designer and designing good academic posters. By the end of this post you will have a better understanding of how to make effective posters to capture an audiences attention with eye catching designs.
Before you can run you must first learn to walk, and the same goes with design. The great designers know the rules, they know when to abide by them and when to break them. It’s an important place to start, as good design posters are there to convey a message, therefore must be legible and visually appealing, so good strong foundations in how to use typography are a must. You can read The 7 Rules Of Typography.
Posters have to serve a purpose, whether that be advertising with posters promoting a new film, or delivering brand messaging, or even informing you with new information. Yes, some posters can be very image based with a variety of things happening in them, whilst others are heavily text based, known as a typography poster. For now though, concentrate on the purpose of the poster. You may have many ideas for advertising posters, but think about how you can make it impactful by using contrast between light and dark, thin and thick, areas of noise and areas of quiet. And if you have got an eye catching effect that you want to use, just use one trick to be your focal point. This is key to how to make effective posters.
Understand the hierarchy on the page. This is a key part for poster adverts and to delivering clear messaging and is necessary to elegant graphic design. You need to guide the viewer through your page, thinking about what the viewers 1st read, 2nd read and 3rd read is etc. (in which order the viewer reads). Traditionally in western culture the viewer starts at the top left of the page and works their way down from left to right. So anything at the top left tends to be the first read and anything at the bottom right tends to be the last.
Location of words isn’t the only way that you can organise your hierarchy. You can determine hierarchy with weight and size as well. Larger and bolder words will capture more attention hence being the 1st read, smaller and lighter type will then become the last read. Bare this in mind when you create typography posters if you don’t want your viewer spending ages trying to figure out what your posters message is. This adds to what makes a poster effective.
Now once you have an understanding of the basic rules, you can start to play around with your poster designs more really pushing them to the limits. You can start breaking up words and letters, really playing around with the design and trying new ideas out. This is known as experimental typography, there is a balance to this as the principles of space and alignment will still apply but you do so in a far more creative manner.
This could well be your missing piece in the jigsaw. You may feel that somethings missing in your poster design but you just don’t know what it is. Maybe you’re comparing it to the works of others and feeing that your work is not as refined.
Well the use of textures maybe your answer. Just by simply dragging and dropping a few into your project, it will tie all of your design elements together in a cohesive fashion creating a unified look. It’s a very similar concept to applying a filter to a photo or a design.
Digital textures can take a decent poster design and make it a great poster design design whether it is a typography poster, advertising poster or just a poster you created for fun.
Below are some FREE downloadable textures that can elevate your work today, try them out, I hope they help you.
