How to Make Posters for Free

Advertise your upcoming band performance, recruit for auditions for your school play or tell your neighborhood about a community meeting by capturing their attention with a poster. There’s no need to spend big bucks getting a poster custom designed for you when you can make your own for free. Use your computer’s Paint software, a graphics program included with your installation. With a couple of quick clicks in Paint, you can create posters for any occasion, as basic or intricate as your creativity desires, at zero cost.

Instructions

1. Open Paint, pull down the “Image” menu and select “Attributes.” Set your poster size; for a standard page of paper, type 8.5 inches by 11 inches. For a standard poster size you’ll find frames easily available for, type 18 inches by 24 inches or 24 inches by 36 inches and click “OK.” A blank poster page opens on the Paint workspace.

2. Click the “Text” tool, which looks like an “A” on the toolbar. Position your cursor near the top of the poster and click. If a toolbar does not appear, select “View” and choose “Text Toolbar.” Select an eye-catching, bold font such as Gill Sans Ultra Bold, Rockwell Extra Bold or Franklin Gothic Heavy. Increase the font size to at least 200 points; more depending on the size of your poster.

3. Type the poster headline, such as “Celtic Cats Play Thursday!,” “Recruiting drummers for drum circle” or “Huge community sale this weekend.”

4. Move the cursor further down the poster, reduce the font size and add additional information, such as an address, contact details including a website or phone number and a description of the performance act or item for sale.

5. (Optional) Add another large line of text at the very bottom of the poster as a call to action, such as “One night only!,” “Sign up this Monday,” “Only five left” or “Reserve your space now!”

6. Click the “Paintbrush” tool, select the medium round brush head and choose a color from the “Color Picker” at the bottom of the screen. Draw a design for the poster, such as a large microphone, bicycle, shopping bag or guitar.

7. Click the “Paintbrush” tool, select the medium round brush head and choose a color from the “Color Picker” at the bottom of the screen. Draw a design for the poster, such as a large microphone, bicycle, shopping bag or guitar.

8. Give your poster a colorful background by choosing a new paint color, clicking the “Paint Bucket” tool, then clicking in the poster’s white space, which fills with the color.

9. (Optional) Add a frame to the poster by clicking the “Paintbrush” tool, choosing the small square brush head and a dark paint color, then drawing a border. Draw an abstract design such as lines and boxes, a graphic such as hearts or smiley faces or something to grab viewers’ eyes such as fire flames or dollar signs.

Tips & Warnings

• Most basic home printers can’t handle printing a poster larger than the standard copy paper size of 8.5 inches by 11 inches. If you’re making a large poster, you’ll need to save your files onto a flash or USB drive, then take it to a print shop. Some shops let you email files over to them, saving you the gas and mileage on the car.

References

• Windows: Using Paint