How to Make & Create Good Poster Designs
A great poster design can be so powerful that it stays in the mind of its viewers for many days -- or even years. Creating a good design is a matter of creating strong images that emotionally connect to your intended audience. You will need the proper graphic design tools, samples of past successful posters and the skill set to use the technology to turn what you imagine into a real poster.
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Instructions
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Get the right design tools for you. Unless you are planning to make each poster by hand, you will need to acquire a good graphic design program for your computer. The professional standards include Adobe's Photoshop, Adobe's Illustrator and CorelDraw. Each of these programs have unlimited potential but have a bit of a learning curve to learn how to fully use its capabilities. If you are looking for something simpler, consider such programs as Corel Paint Shop Pro, GIMP or Paint.net. If you want to keep things real simple, you can design a poster in Microsoft Word.
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Research good poster designs. One of the keys to creating a memorable poster design is seeing what kind of posters were successful in the past. There are a wealth of books on both the history of poster design as well as contemporary poster designs made by prominent artists and creative advertising agencies. Some of these include "New Masters of Poster Design: Poster Design for the Next Century" by John Foster, "Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art" by Michael Strassburger and Robynne Raye and "New Poster Art" by Cees W. de Jong, Stefanie Burger, and Jorre Both. Even if you are not as ambitious or talented as these artists, books like these are a great source for getting good design ideas.
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Create for your target audience. Remember that even if a poster looks really cool to you, it might not connect to the audience you intend to affect. Audience demographics range from kids in elementary school to Wall Street bankers. Make sure the design is simple or sophisticated enough for the people looking at it.
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Create a strong, clear image. A good poster should be a balance between a great artistic design and the presentation of clear information. Viewers should not only like the way a poster looks, they should be able to easily get all the important information on the poster in a matter of seconds. You might want to make a few designs and get feedback from people to see which one works best.
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Output the poster. Unless you have a commercial printer to print out the poster, you will need to output the design and take it to a professional poster printer. All professional printing houses list the exact specifications they need in order to print the poster correctly. There are many commercial printers both online and in every major city. Check around for the best prices and quality. Don't forget about the time it takes to prep and print the poster as it is often at least a few days.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit poster du courrier image by Philippe LERIDON from Fotolia.com
