Do you remember participating in poster making contests in school? Do you remember winning any of those?
Worry not, so what if you didn’t win those back in the day, we are here to make your life simpler and get you to ace your poster making skills, just this time around, you will not use crayons to make posters, but cool websites like invideo.
Ground rules for making posters
1. Less is more
With more and more clutter in the advertising world, it is important to stand out, with every creative you make, and with every social media post that you push out. When we talk about creating posters, don’t try to fit everything in one frame, don’t try to use too many colors, and don’t use too many fonts.
Always make clean, simple to understand, and eye-catching posters. When was the last time you read a poster end to end, which had more than 3 lines of text in it? Exactly! Be smart, be sleek, and be clear.
2. Play with colors
Use contracting, fun colors. People are too busy to find and read a poster in a world of clutter. One way to attract people to your poster is by standing out. You can use color palette tools and websites to come up with interesting color combinations, which resonate with your brand identity and also pop enough to get your audiences’ attention!
3. Play with space
Space is an important element of designing. When you are putting together a poster or a batch of creatives, you want to optimize and use space in the most innovative and inviting way possible.
Some designers prefer to have the call to action bang in the center of the frame, and some prefer image dominated frames with text on the top-center. There is a lot you can do with relatively empty posters by using negative space! You can always refer to some of the minimalistic posters that became a rage a couple of years back, remember, copying is also an art (wink wink).
4. Play with typography
Even though this might seem like the easiest element to work with, but it is tricky in its own right. Finding the right synergy between different fonts, sizes, and spacing is the key to a successful creative/poster.
Rule of thumb is, try to use different fonts of the same family in sizing hierarchy, but sometimes polar opposing fonts come together to give a visual masterpiece. Did you know – Helvetica is considered the friendliest font, it exudes trust.
5. Count your words down
You might have to communicate a lot via your poster, like – Name of your event, location, cost, line-up, and a call to action. You should use smart copy and try to say as much as you can in as few words as possible! A trick some people use these days is QR codes.
A scan and all the information you need about the said event is on your fingertips. Some people go with the age-old wordplay. How you choose to communicate your point in the poster in your creative call but always keep the customer/audience in mind while designing your poster.
6. Logo Placement and Call To Action
While everything is fun and play when you are designing a simple poster, you should have some branding guidelines in place from day 1. The logo of any brand is their key element, you treat it with respect and give it the attention it needs. Before you release any poster, set a standard sizing expectation for your logo, for example, a height of 100 pixels is a pre-requisite for any poster released by your brand.
Along with setting a sizing expectation, you should also define the location of the logo. Most brands stick to a standard top-right column of the frame. You can set your guidelines and use them for all your posters, so there is brand synergy in all your collaterals.
Along with logo placement, another important thing to consider is how you emphasize your call to action. ‘BOOK NOW’ can be plastered loud in the center of the frame or fit in a clickbait type box. This is where you use your spacing and font game to ace your visual communication!
How to make eye-catching posters?
Now that we have some ground rules in place, how do you get started with actually making fun and eye-catching posters? Let’s find out –
1. Why are you making the poster?
Are you making a poster to promote your event online, or are you going to place a promotional offer for your product outside different medical stores? Knowing this helps you define the dimensions of the poster and whether or not it should be readable from a distance.
2. What type of poster do you need to make?
Should your poster be visual-heavy or text-heavy? This depends on the question asked above. If you are making an online poster, always use fewer words – Use more visual cues, like vectors and hi-res images to get your point across. If you are making a poster to give information about your product/service/event, it is important to have more text on the poster.
3. How do I start designing the poster?
Now that you know what purpose the poster needs to serve, and what your copy should be, you can either hire a designer to make a poster for you, or you can take the easier way out and make a poster for free on websites like invideo. You can skip the process of making a template from scratch and use any pre-existing template from a wide range of options. You can tweak and explore different fonts, colors, and sizes, and adapt them to your requirements. You can also change images, sizes, and locations of any existing element in the frame!
To conclude
You can go a step further, and also use invideo for making videos, it is the best free video editor in the industry currently. So what are you waiting for? Start using your creative cells and win THIS poster making challenge!
