Posters

Posters are an ancient art form, widely used to present information to someone. I made posters all of the time, growing up. In fact, I became a master at pasting information onto trifold, bifold, and giant pieces of card stock. To this day, I use some of the same techniques that I did, because at the end of the day, a poster is still a way to share information with a reader. The only difference is that now I think about my audience and information that might be essential to the reader. Here some of the elements that I have always tried to ensure are included in my poster:

Make it easy to read:

It can be easy to go over the top with a flashy design—after all, we want out poster to stand out and attract attention. The key is not to use unique features to bring a reader in, but to instead use the elements already required for your poster to make it stand out.

Instead of using Comic Sans or a handwritten script, use a legible san-serif like Helvetica. Not only does it make your poster look clean, but information looks neat and is easy to read. Going with this, choose a font size that can be read from further away. You want titles to be readable from at least 10 ft. away. If you have a lot of information, you may feel the need to make the font smaller and stick information wherever you can—on the opposing end, you may feel like you need to make the font bigger to compensate for a lack of information. However, it is important to ignore these urges and, instead, find ways to use white space effectively to help guide your reader through the information you have provided. Using the right font and font size will help you create effective white space.

Make it visually interesting:

For some reason, we are inclined to use bold colors like bright green and red in posters. We want to, again, grab attention, but it can come across as tacky and unprofessional. It’s important to ensure that you are using colors to create contrast between information on your poster, because then your content can speak for itself. Colors should not be the attention grabber. Additionally, you want to make sure to choose images that compliment your content, as well as that you are carefully curating the images that you use.

Make it flow:

As I’ve mentioned, your content should grab the attention of your audience, not just your design. For this reason, it’s important to organize your information in a way the best way possible. If you want your reader to read the background of the project first, then don’t put it on the right side of the poster, especially because we read left-to-right in the US—other countries may be different. Make sure that your title is descriptive but not too wordy, and that your text is clear and concise.

In all of these tips, it is important to recognize that you are presenting to an audience, so know who they are and design your poster to suit their needs.