How to Create Your Own Poster Design: Tips for Beginners

Nowadays, posters are used for many purposes from room decoration to business promotion. They are a great visual aid, which helps to deliver the necessary information more efficiently and, at the same time, a nice tool to enliven the interior design.

Poster design process can be fun and is able to provide you with a number of opportunities to show your creativeness and talents. We’d like to provide you with some tips on how to create your own poster and become a decent poster designer.

Contents [hide]

1 How to Design a Poster
2 How to Design Your Own Poster without Special Graphic Design Programs
3 Tips on Creation of Cool Poster Designs
4 How to Become a Good Poster Designer
5 Great Poster Design Ideas
- 5.1 Scientific Poster Design
- 5.2 Event Poster Design

How to Design a Poster

A Wanted Poster Template

If you design poster, you need to take into account that any poster, except the one used for home décor only, needs to contain a certain message. The message must address the viewers directly and grab their attention immediately. That’s why, in order to make your poster work, you need to think over the message you want to deliver very carefully.

This message must be arranged in the eye-catching design. It can be an interesting background, photos, illustrations or any other type of visual elements. You can also find a number of ready poster templates, which you can turn into original posters. In fact, you can create a great number of cool poster designs, using only one illustration and one message. The most important in poster design process is to turn on your imagination.

The most widespread programs for poster creation are Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. They are rather complex and if you still don’t know how to use them, you will need some time to learn. If you have no time to learn Photoshop design, you may try to make a poster using PowerPoint or Word. Of course, the possibilities of these programs aren’t so wide, but sometimes it’s enough for a graphic design poster.

There are also a number of online poster creators, which offer to create posters directly on their sites. They may offer a free and paid poster design template, a number of fonts, colors and pictures.

How to Design Your Own Poster without Special Graphic Design Programs

A How To Poster

If you make up your mind to design a poster, but aren’t very good with graphic design programs, you are free to create your poster using PowerPoint or Word.

When working in Power Point, you need to make a poster as a single slide. You can specify the page size (Design>Page Setup) before you start by adding the dimensions you want in Page Setup section.

Thus, you will be able to create the poster in the dimensions you need, for example, for A1 format or any other size. If creating a poster in Word, you make a poster for A4 format but it’s possible to scale it up later.

In both, PowerPoint and Word, it’s possible to add text boxes (Insert>Shapes) so that you are able to control the position of the text on the page.

Once the poster is ready and you are going to have it printed, you need to convert it into PDF format with the help of PDF Creator or Adobe Acrobat. During the process of conversion, the edges of the page may cut off, the images may degrade and that’s why you need to be attentive and get rid of all these problems at the conversion stage. When the PDF version looks good, the printed poster must be good as well.

One more important thing, which you need to take care of, is the fonts. If you don’t embed the fonts in the PDF documents, it’s possible that the used fonts will be absent in the printer’s system. It means that your fonts will be replaced by other ones and that may spoil your poster. If your document is converted with the help of Adobe Acrobat, click the Properties button and make sure that there is no tick near the “Rely on system fonts only” section. If you use PDF Creator, make sure that “Embed all fonts” box is ticked in the Fonts tab.

Tips on Creation of Cool Poster Designs

A Tips Poster

While working at poster board designs, it isn’t enough to know the basics. You should also take into account a number of other important things. Here are some tips on creation of poster designs:

The key information must be easy readable from distance. Not every person will come up to see what is written on the poster if its theme is unclear. That’s why, you need to write the headline in large letters and with the help of easy-readable font so that it is clearly seen what the poster is about. It’s also advisable to use large spacing between the elements of the text to make it better seen from a distance.
Use contrasting colors. The color of the poster background and the text must be contrasting if you want to grab the attention. The use of black words on a gray background is good for the posters, which are used for decorative purposes only. Don’t fear to experiment with bright colors in poster design.
Think about the location of the poster. The place, where a poster is located, is also an important element in poster creation. In order to make the poster eye-catching, you need to take into account the color scheme as well as style of the place. It’s important that the poster look organic in the design but, at the same time, doesn’t blend with it.
The image must complement the poster idea. You can’t just take a random image and use it as a background. The illustration is as important part of the posters as text and that’s why, you need to choose it thoughtfully.
Use several fonts. Though some designers are afraid of using several fonts in one poster, their usage may arise more interest to the poster and make it look more original. You are also free to write certain things in bold or cursive types.
Always spell-check the poster. It’s necessary to check if everything is correct several times before you print the poster in order to avoid extra charges.

How to Become a Good Poster Designer

A Graphic Designer Poster

In order to become a good poster designer, you, first of all, need to be talented and creative. However, it’s also important to know some things, which aren’t written in books or told at lectures. Here are 6 useful pieces of advice for poster designers:

A great idea is the most important thing for graphic design posters. It’s even more important than the design itself. Start with a sketch and write down your ideas. Once you find the one you really like, start to design posters and think about illustrations and content.
Know the aim of the poster and the target audience. It’s impossible to design a successful poster if you don’t know what it’s created for and for whom. First, you need to find out these things and only after that start working out the idea.
Try working out the poster design away from your computer. You will get inspired by the things around you and won’t be distracted by other things like email, Facebook chat etc.
Don’t be afraid to stand out. If you want to be noticed, you shouldn’t design posters similar to the ones of other authors. Try to invent something special, which will help you to get the reputation of an independent and creative designer.
Keep poster design simple. There is no point in making the poster overloaded with tons of information and images. Make the poster eye-catching, but easy to read and perceive.
Spend a day with your design. After the design is ready, don’t hurry up to present it to everybody. Do some other things and then, return and have a new look at your design. If it has some defects, you will notice them faster than after checking it several times in a row.

Great Poster Design Ideas

Here are ideas of how to create good posters for three absolutely different purposes: science, movie advertising and a certain event.

Scientific Poster Design

A Scientific Poster

Scientific and research posters are an efficient way to show the results of your scientific work or present the lectures information in a more convenient way.

If you need to design a scientific poster and want to make it both functional and beautiful, you need to pay attention to the following things:

Shorten your text lines. It’s rather difficult to read a text if it has long lines. That’s why, it’s better to divide the text of your poster into columns. It’s also important to leave some breathing space around the text pieces.
Pay attention to the font. Don’t use small fonts as they may cause inconvenience for some people. It’s good to use 85pt for the title, 36–44 for the headers and 24–34 for the body text. One more recommendation is to use non-standard fonts. They will definitely attract more attention.
Cut the text. A good poster design needs to be short and clear. There is no need in adding too much extra information to the poster. Include only the most important things and provide the additional information personally.
Don’t use too many colors. Scientific posters aren’t the place to use all the colors of a rainbow. Use two or three colors, which are well combined and, at the same time, attract attention.
If you want to emphasize some words in the text, it’s better to use bold face or italics, but not other kinds of fonts.
The background and text must have a high contrast. It’s better to choose lighter colors for the background and darker ones for the text.

Event Poster Design

A Happy Birthday Poster Design

Posters can be designed for a great number of occasions. If you need to make the best poster design for a certain event, you don’t need to follow such strict rules as during the creation of a scientific print. The design of an event poster depends upon the kind of the event. Thus, a business event print will be more restrained and modest than the one, designed for a party or family gathering. The posters for parties, including the ones for Easter and Christmas décor, have no limits in design. If you design them for your personal use, you can place there whatever you want. However, if you design a poster for a public event, for example a concert, you should be more careful. In this case, it’s better to keep the following things in mind:

The mix of fonts is suitable for event posters. You may combine as many fonts as you want to make the poster expressive and memorable. Make the keywords bigger and add weight to them to achieve the necessary impact.
Pay attention to the colors. Colors may evoke certain emotions and feelings. That’s why, the colors may vary for different events. While rock concert posters must be bright and provoking, the prints for a ballet may be made in lighter and more subdued colors.
Keep the intrigue and create a catching phrase. It’s not necessary to expose all the details in the poster. Allow people to turn on their imagination and think about what they are going to see. At the same time, a print must contain a catching phrase, which will make them interested.

A Captain America Movie Poster

The image is the most important element in a movie poster. The use of the right picture may increase the sales of both posters and tickets to the cinema. Besides the image, a movie print needs to contain the title of the movie and the actors’ names. All the rest of the information is optional. The design of a movie poster has no other rules. The most important is to make it unique, expressive and eye-catching.

The creation of a great poster design may seem to be a rather complicated task. However, if to do everything in the right sequence and treat this process seriously, you will be able to achieve excellent results. The use of our pieces of advice will help you to do everything correctly. But, your desire, creativeness and inspiration are even more important in this issue.

Your may draw the poster design inspiration from a number of things. You can look through the posters, made by other designers, to get an idea of what to start with. You may get inspired by your life, nature, people, pets, books, magazines etc. In fact, inspiration sources are personal and there is no one thing, which will motivate everybody. So, don’t waste your time and start to create your poster right now!