Tips On Designing A Promotional Poster
.’sPosters are one of the most popular and tested forms of advertising. It is an efficient way to generate brand awareness and draw the target audience to come and check out your product or service offering. Due to the advent of digital marketing, we have forgotten how to properly design a poster. We believe that there is no correct way to design a poster but there are enough best practices that you can follow. If you are a new business with little understanding of design, then you can get help from a custom poster printing agency. And if you are one of those people who likes to work in-house, then you will definitely need a suitable printer to match your needs.
In this post, we have undertaken a huge responsibility to present one of the most detailed poster design guides in a format which is easy to understand and implement for new designers.
Most preferred tips on designing a promotional poster
Determine The Goal First
As a brand, you may have varying goals at any given point of your business cycle and depending on what you want to achieve in the short-term and long-term. Are you looking to educate the users about the latest products or services? or Are you just trying to inform them about an event in your city? or Are you looking to create awareness about a social cause? Poster printing will be able to help you with any of these goals and take it to a wider audience. If you keep your primary goal in sight, you can actually use the goal to push your design choices. For instance, if your goal is to sell products from your new catalogue then your poster should be specifically designed to assist you to achieve that goal. You can design extra large posters to be hung outside your store or in public places to reach a wider audience.
Target Audience
The 2nd step is to figure out your target audience. It will help you to understand how to reach them with your custom poster printing. For instance, if you are advertising to an older population, you need to take care of the design and colours to make it look professional. Having said that, you should also go bold with the design and use your branding colours to enhance your poster. Hence, it is extremely important to determine who you are appealing to before you go ahead and design the poster for your brand. Try to make at least three to four designs for a single campaign and then go with the best choice based on the target audience.
Where Will You Share The Poster?
The last thing to do before you start the design process is to determine where the poster will be shared. Are you simply going to print the poster and hang it in your store? Or are you looking to share the poster with your audience on social media? It is necessary to plan this step before you start working on the design front. This is due to the fact that poster optimization for print is quite different than doing it for social channels like Facebook or Instagram. When you are planning to print your poster, you have a fair idea of where you are going to strategically place the poster. Based on that, you can make some design changes to the poster so that it is visible from a fair distance and is inviting enough to excite and engage the audience. This is where large poster printing comes in when you want to make the poster visible from a long distance.
Select Your Paper and Paper Size
It is worth hiring an agency if you are looking to print extra large posters. But if you are looking to print standard size posters like A2, A3 or A4/A5 you can do it yourself. That’s because it is more convenient to use poster template. One can also customise it to fit A1 to A5 sizes in a matter of a few seconds. Moreover, you can also choose the size of your poster in pixels, inches or centimeters too. You can choose from a number of thick materials like a 6 sheet poster for example. Finally, you can determine the type of paper and its weight with your print agency. But a silk paper of 170gsm or 150gsm is a popular choice. GSM is a standard unit in print terminology which means grams per square meter which shows the heaviness of the paper stock.
Brand Colours
A color scheme is the first thing which is noticed by the target audience. More often than not, the color scheme is pretty obvious. It is ideal that brands go with the colors which resonate with their branding and logo. You can try to create a good contrast too. If you are not too sure about which colors to choose apart from your branding, then you can take a look at color psychology. For example, green is linked to nature or the environment and hence can be a good fit for nature theme or organic foods poster. Similarly, red is linked to strength and courage and also shares a sign of emergency hence it is the most widely used color in fast-food restaurants.
Call-To-Action
Once you have the attention of the passersby, you need to make it easy for them to contact you. This is also known as a Call-To-Action or CTA. Irrespective of the nature or the goal of the poster, it is imperative to include a clear CTA. If there is no CTA, you might as well not print a poster in the first place.
Final Word
We have included all the best practices to keep in mind when you design a promotional poster for your brand. We hope that it will be a good starting point to help you design a compelling and distinct poster for your audience. If you still need help, then you can contact a poster printing agency to design and print the poster of your dreams for your upcoming projects.