POSTER DESIGN ( UNIT-3)

A film poster. 

Poster design is always an integral part of Designers profile. Posters can be designed for Movies, for events, invitations or just for personal inspiration. What ever may be the reason, but you need to make sure the design is convincing to the client for the user because we can’t force them to think from our mind. Artistic Poster design should be both different as well as easy to understand.

Basic principles

A poster is a visual presentation of information and should be designed as such - do not simply reproduce your written paper in poster format.

It should be understandable to the reader without verbal comment - someone might look at it while you are talking to another delegate, or while you're in the toilet.

Remember, you are trying to catch the delegate's attention.

Content of the poster

Make sure the title and author's name are prominent and eye-catching

Tell a story: provide clear flow of information from introduction to conclusion

Focus on your major findings - a common fault is to try to cover too much. Few delegates are going to read everything on your poster, so get to the point.

Use graphs, tables, diagrams and images where appropriate. Use boxes to isolate and emphasize specific points.

Always follow the conference guidelines, which may be specific about what you are expected to present.

Tips for good poster

- Use all the space at your disposal, but do not cram in the content - white space is an important part of the layout, and good use of it can make a poster elegant and arresting.

- Use color sparingly - limited use of a few colors is more striking than a 'rainbow' approach. Think about why you are using color; it is especially useful for emphasis and differentiation.

- Avoid color combinations that clash (e.g. red on blue) or cause problems for people with color-blindness (e.g. red and green in proximity).

- Use white or muted color background (e.g. pastel shades)

- The flow of information should be clear from the layout; if you have to use arrows to indicate the flow, the content could probably be arranged better.

- Clearly label diagrams/drawings and provide references to them in the text where necessary.

- Again, follow the conference guidelines, which may be quite specific about paper sizes, font sizes etc.

- The title text should be readable from 6 metres away - at least 48-point text. (Note that if you are creating your poster in A4 format, to be blown up to A1 format later, the final printed font size will be approximately 3 times the size you are working with.)

- The body text should be readable from 2 metres away - at least 24-point text

Choose a clear font with large inner space (i.e. the space inside the loops of letters such as 'o', 'd', 'p'). Good examples are Arial, Verdana, Georgia or Helvetica.

- Keep the word count as low as possible.

Creating your poster

You can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create your poster. These are not graphical layout applications, but they are adequate in most cases. In PowerPoint, create your poster as a single slide. You can set the page size when you start using File > Page Setup, so if you want an A1 poster (594mm × 840mm), you can specify this before you start (there may not be an A1 option, but you can enter the dimensions manually).

PowerPoint also allows you to add guidelines to help you line up the poster elements. Use View > Grid and Guides... and tick the Display grid on screen box.

In Ms Word, create your poster as a single side of A4. You can always scale it up when you come to print it. Word does not have guidelines as such, but you can get a grid by showing the Drawing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Drawing) which will probably appear at the bottom of the screen, then from that toolbar choose Draw > Grid... and tick the Display gridlines on screen box.

In both applications, use the Drawing toolbar to add text boxes to the screen. This allows you to control the way the text is positioned on the page.

MAKE PDF FILE - When the poster is designed, you should convert it to PDF for printing, using PDF Creator or Adobe Acrobat. The conversion process can be problematic: edges of words and images may be cut off near to the margins, images may appear degraded or misshapen, poster elements may have shifted and become overlapping. However, by ironing out these problems at the conversion stage, you avoid nasty surprises later when you come to print it out. When the PDF looks good, you can be pretty confident that the printed version will also be OK.