Zen & The Art Of Poster Making
The basic principles of great poster design are actually a pretty solid guide for living a life of intention.
From the moment that my parents bought a small print shop in the summer of 1989, I have been transfixed by the machinations of graphic design. What began as simply learning how to use as an X-Acto knife, a light table, and a darkroom, has gradually become an understanding of the ins and outs of layering and editing within Photoshop, as well as the glorious joy of clipping masks.
My brief life leading up to that moment in 1989 had been filled with great design that I lapped up in the form of album covers and movie posters. Listening to albums, I would pore over liner notes and study the photos, fonts, and paintings that graced these brilliant slices of wax.
Movie posters didn't just look like art, they were art, and displayed as such in our home. My mother collected film memorabilia. While she didn't veer toward anything valuable or particularly rare, she did have a lovingly curated gallery of posters, lobby cards, heads shots, and more.
The posters that hung around our living room for classic films featuring Garbo, Fonda, Gable, and more were their own crash course in design. Even after just a few glances, I began to pick up on the ways that color, type, and images were used to not just convey basic info of the film, but also hinted at the plots and themes within as well. While these might seem like basic observations now, to my teenage self, they felt like a shockwave of awareness.
In the nearly thirty five years that I have been learning and practicing this art form, I have stumbled upon a few basic rules that help to keep me on the path toward great results. It is rather remarkable that as I lay these guidelines out for you that I also realize they are also a wonderful guide to living a better and more intentional life.
Simplify
Most posters have far too much information on them. There was a time when we needed to convey several pieces of info at once to a potential viewer. That time has past. Details like ticket prices, times, and addresses can now be had in a few microseconds with just a quick search. While those details probably have a spot in your design, make sure you remember that as long as the potential attendee knows the name of the event, maybe the date, and the general area where it’s happening, the rest is imminently findable.
Focus on the one or two crucial pieces of information that you need your potential audience to remember and give those full focus as you begin. From there, only add the most necessary requirements. It is crucial to remember that most folks that even take the time to look at your poster are likely to give it no more than a second or two at most. You need to get their attention with one thing. It’s probably the name of your show, musical, event, or band. It sounds simple, but start at the beginning and only add what you need.
Prioritize
Once you’ve assembled and selected the information you’ve deemed crucial to conveying, you’ll need to prioritize the arrangement of your design. Is there a title you want the viewer you see first? Maybe you have a striking image or piece of art that will be the focal point. Perhaps you have a great looking banner font for the name of the headlining band. Begin your piece with that idea at the forefront of what you want to build. Everything that you assemble from here forward should support whatever your focal point is.
Let’s assume you have a striking image and some bold text to convey the name of your event. As you add details like time, date and location, you want to make sure your text is far smaller for these important, but secondary bits of information, than your main title focal point. Not all of your information is equal. Give each item its appropriate amount of weight.
Be Consistent
Fonts are awesome. They can bring simple lettering to life with a mouse click. They have become free and ubiquitous. Now, they’re even the butt of jokes online as folks dig at corny typefaces like Comic Sans or Papyrus.
Before the days of Canva and even Microsoft word, I lived in a world where fonts were a relatively rare commodity. The expensive font pack that we first purchased for the print shop was several hundred dollars and had something like 100 fonts or so in it. If we needed Times New Roman bold italic, we couldn’t just hop on to 1001fonts.com and pick up a new one.
This reduced availability taught me quickly about the value of limiting your font choices when designing a poster or record cover. What I saw at the time as a huge roadblock, I now see was a lesson in how to use type effectively.
Most terrible poster design comes from an overuse of fonts. Once we reach three, four, five, or more different typefaces in a single piece, all aspects begin to lose their meaning and we’re left wondering what info we should be getting from the design, while also giving the viewer a terribly unpleasant experience. It also removes all style from the poster and becomes nothing more than a muddled mess.
Start by limiting yourself to just one font. Use italics, bold, and other font features to change the shape, width, and character of your typeface. Then, begin incorporating color, which we’ll talk about more in a moment, to accent the truly important information.
Display The Truest Colors
Color, much like fonts, gets overused all of the time. Would be designers get caught up in the idea that more colors or more fonts means more good. It doesn’t. Design, like cooking, is about choices. It is as much about what we leave out as what we add in. It’s also about understanding the effect of adding small amounts of powerful ingredients to what we’re making.
Choose a main color and then use your accent colors with scarcity. Every word does not need to be in a new font and a new color. If you really want to dive in, start learning about color swatches, the color wheel, and how these things pair together. Like most art forms, making design look simple can be incredibly complicated. We don’t have to let it be that way.
Your color scheme should reinforce the themes of your event. Is it an autumnal fundraiser with a color tour? Don’t use pastels, dude. When in doubt, re-read the rules above and apply again to color.
Don’t Do It All Yourself
Most posters attempt to convey too much information, or have no focus that allows them to unveil the information in any sort of order. Often this is a result of a designer not trusting his audience. Yes, I want to simplify. Yes, I want to clarify my point. Yes, I want to use color and type and imagery to draw focus and attention to specific areas. I also need to ask for some investment from my potential viewer as well.
It’s difficult to make an attractive, effective, and intriguing poster or album cover. One could easily follow all of the rules above and still end up with something that feels, well . . . boring. Even a great designer can start with a good idea, a good focal point, and follow the basic precepts and still wind up with a soulless poster that conveys information, but with little meaning or depth.
I find that most posters leaving me feeling flat, and I’m left with little to no memory of them afterward. They are fine, but forgettable. The truly remarkable posters make me work a little bit for it. Perhaps there is a bit of text that’s tough to read or an image that is haunting but unclear. Maybe the poster has been aged, weathered or worn to make it seem as though the digital image has lived in the real world. Trust that your audience will find their own way. If you do it all for them, they won’t bother making the journey at all.
Fail
Design like any true art form, can only truly be learned and absorbed through a series of humiliating failures. We must do things poorly repeatedly until we can learn to do them well. Allow yourself the chance to fail at a new idea or approach. Revel more in a bad poster made with your own vision than in a good poster made in the shadow of someone else’s.
It is often in failure and struggle that we can truly find ourselves, and our voices.
Cheers,
Matty C
I agree wholeheartedly with what has been said here! As a poster maker myself, I believe in simplicity, and the power of clarity of message. When it comes to failures and making mistakes I think the most important thing is to accept their inevitability and the absolute necessity of allowing them to happen. It's impossible to improve in anything without taking a risk of looking silly or cringy.
You have a real gift!