At one time or another, almost everyone needs to create a poster. By thinking about your audience, having a clear goal regarding what you want your poster to accomplish, and adding tasteful decorations you can create outstanding posters on any topic.
Instructions
1. Think about your goals. Do you need to create an advertisement? Or how about a presentation aid? The type of poster you need to make will determine its look and feel.
2. Think about your audience. What kind of effect do you want to have on them? What do you want them to think about when they are looking at your poster? For example, if you have to do a poster about the dangers of drunk driving, consider making your poster shocking by filling it with powerful images and strong language. This may not be appropriate for a poster explaining the Bernoulli Effect and its implications for airplane wing design, however.
3. Decide on the size and type of poster you want to use. Tri-fold poster boards are great tools if you need a lot of space for content and expect your audience to spend a while looking over it. If you expect your poster to be hung in a busy hallway where people will only have a second or two to glance at it, an appropriately sized flat poster with large, simple content may be better.
4. Think about the techniques professionals use to impact their audience. For advertisements, think about billboards on the sides of highways, commercials on TV, and magazine ads. Notice the things that caught your attention and remain in your memory. Try to copy those techniques in your poster. For more serious, informational posters, think about magazine articles and web pages. Notice the relationship between text and images.
5. Design your poster's layout. Be sure your main content is in a dominant position, such as the top or center, so people look at it first. Again, keep your audience in mind when designing your poster. Think about what they will notice on first glance. If you have a lot of text and expect your audience to stop and look, be sure that it is organized in a logical way.
6. Once your content is organized in a logical manner, think about decorations that are appropriate, complement your content, and are not distracting. Do not add anything that takes away from your content, and remember that using "white space" (the space in between objects on your poster) keeps your poster from looking cluttered.
7. Add some color to your poster. If you have printed text on white paper, consider cutting around the text and gluing or taping it to colored paper to make it stand out a little more. Add borders to the objects in your poster or around the entire poster itself. Try to be as neat and clean as possible with your decorations, and always let paint or marker dry before running your hand or arm through it.
8. Be creative! If your poster is about gambling, consider hot gluing poker cards and chips to your poster. Cut your poster into an irregular shape if your poster is about amoebas. There's an infinite number of things you can do to make your poster unique and interesting.
