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Produce the perfect poster

Have you ever wanted to produce an eye catching poster?

If so, this is for you!

Why produce a poster?

A poster is second to no other method of communicating when it comes to drawing attention to a particular aspect of your business. A well designed poster can have a higher hit rate than any other form of communication - but making sure your notice is noticed is not always as easy as you might imagine.

A poster is a great way of highlighting an upcoming event or advertising a particular service or product and can be a useful communications tool for internal and external audiences.

How do I create a poster?

Designing and printing large, full colour, posters can be an expensive process, with many expert design companies charging high fees for the pleasure. However, creating a professional looking poster is something anyone can achieve with just the minimum skill and tools.

A simple word processing program on any PC is a perfect method for producing a poster. The simple layout and easy to use tools mean the adding of pictures and editing of text can be done with relative simplicity. Most programs also include a set of templates that make the process even quicker.

What should I include in our poster?

Not a lot! It sounds daft but it’s important to remember that a poster, although effective at attracting your audience’s attention, will be ignored if there is too much information to read.

Try to keep the content brief, just a few sentences or the basic information. Remember your 5 Ws and an H (who, what where, when, why and how?) Bullet points are effective as they break-up the text, making it easier to grasp, especially when they outline the benefits of your service or key offerings. Don’t assume people will make the connection between what you are offering and how it will help them in some way, eg. all staff have an enhanced CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check (so you can be sure your children are in safe hands).

Try to keep the poster as graphical as possible, a picture tells a thousand words and on an A4 poster, you don’t have space for a thousand words!

Be sure to include all the appropriate contact details for your organisation. Your website and a phone number should always be on, giving the reader somewhere to get more information or a method of contacting you should they wish to.

Think about what you want you poster to achieve. Give the reader a call to action. Do you want them to buy one of your products, use your service, attend your event or just to raise your organisation’s profile.

Useful tips

• Remember if a poster is full of text, it will be ignored. Try to keep it concise without compromising the information you’re presenting.

• Whilst fancy fonts might make the poster look interesting, too many different ones will just hurt the reader’s eyes. Try not to use more than a couple of different styles and avoid those which might be difficult to read. Arial, Tahoma and Verdana are the best ones.

• Think about the colours you use. A colour poster is always likely attract more attention than a black and white one, but some colours don’t work well together and colour printing is more expensive than mono, so try not to use more colour than you need. Also, to be inclusive remember x and y colours are hard for dyslexics and those with colour blindness to read.

• Where possible, give the poster a standout headline. Just like attractive graphics lure people in, a clever header will grab the attention of anyone who catches a glimpse of the poster.

• Try posing questions that will interest your audience, eg “Why not have a great cup of coffee and raise stacks of cash fro charity while you are doing it?”.

• Make the text nice and large- no one will whip out their magnifying glass or dive into their handbag for their specs as they pass your poster in the library or wherever- especially if your customers are likely to be elderly.

Download the A4 poster template and start making your own!

Download a printable version of this document

NB. To download these files right click on the above link select the "Save target as" option.

If you're having problems, you can find out more information about using the templates here