I have just a few points to add.

1.  Think very carefully about your customer’s perspective and what is going to be most appealing to them.  Sell the sizzle, not the steak.  I am not saying to be deceptive, this is usually a matter of emphasis, for example  “John’s Expert Massage – I am trained in all types, I am very experienced!”  vs. “Shed Your Stress! Spend just one hour with John and you will depart feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.”  Can you see how different the two approaches are?  The former is you telling them about you, the latter is addressing what benefit is there for them. (Go with the latter!)

2.  Spice up your headline and copy if possible.  In my example here I changed the headline from “How to Create an Effective Poster” (yawn) to “How to Create a KILLER Poster” (I know I have this scary theme going on, but what can I say? Halloween is coming!)  You want to try to come up with some wording that will create a emotional reaction, that will get more attention.

3.  Be sure you have a “call to action”.  In my example, I want them to “visit our blog”.  Maybe you want them to “call now”, or “stop by and see our new widget”.  And, of course, be sure to include your contact information.

4.  Don’t go crazy with your colors either.  See the example – I used black and red – throwing a bunch of random colors in will create a chaotic look. (We already discussed this in regard to fonts and artwork in earlier posts, but the same is true of color – less really is more.)

5.  Get some feedback.  Show it to a few people and get their feedback – they may catch something or have some great suggestion  you haven’t thought of.

Well, that about covers it!  By the way, the info in this series of posts is going to apply to most graphic projects, it is not really limited to just posters and flyers.  If you study and apply these general principles they will take you far in improving and evaluating your next design project.  Let me know how it goes!

Your best contrast is going to be black on white or white on black, of course.  Let’s take another look at our “scary” poster.  I wanted the all text at the top to be readable from as far away as possible, so I made the very top text white, but I wanted the “Horrors” to be in red.  Instead of just using red by itself and losing some of my contrast, I put a white outline behind the red which makes it “pop,” or gives it extra contrast, (see the example below on the left.) Notice, I did not try to make the whole poster readable from a distance, I am putting my money on the word “Horrors” as a hook to pull someone over to find out more, that is where the emphasis is.  The rest of the text is smaller because I want “Horrors” to be like a magnet for the eye – I don’t want the rest of my text to compete with it.

A tip for photocopying – I see a fair amount of flyers which have been photocopied black on red paper.  While red is a good color to stand out, it doesn’t give you very good contrast with black.  Try using a bright pink or other lighter fluorescent color instead – that will work better.

Simplicity involves the “KISS” rule.  Keep It Simple Stupid, (which my good friend digitalmarketingdiva covered in her recent blog in regard to digital marketing here.)

Think carefully about what you need to say and trim your copy down to the bare essentials – you are not trying to tell your whole story here, you are just giving enough of the facts to get them to contact you or attend your event.  PLEASE, I BEG YOU, resist the idea to put in more than one piece of clip art or use more than two different fonts.  This is a common mistake inexperienced designers make.  It seems more “designerish” to use lots of different elements – don’t do it.  One large piece of art is much preferred over several small. I would generally avoid borders also, they tend to close things in and make them look cramped.  (Think of how you feel when you walk in a house with vaulted ceilings, as opposed to low ceilings, see?)

People read from top to bottom and left to right.  Decide what is most important and put that at the top and make it bigger.  Decide what is next important and put that next.  Then put your artwork in.  Whatever is left to say, try to make smaller and put it at the bottom.  This composition is just a general rule of thumb, and you can play around with variations.

Small print is okay, if you can capture their initial interest it is more likely people will become intrigued and will look for more information.  Usually you will put this at the bottom.  Here (left) is a good example of a great simple poster.  It is eye catching and has some white space (breathing room).  On the right is a good example of a bad example.  Too busy, too many pictures, too many fonts, and poor composition.

Which one catches your eye?

The first thing I consider when designing a poster for my client is who is my client trying to attract?  Who is their target market?  I ask them and listen carefully to their response.  A great example is the Halloween flyer for a haunted house featured in my last post.  This client already had some artwork , which she shared with me and it was very nicely done (see example) but, who goes to haunted houses…?  Teenagers that’s who.  Teenagers want to be really SCARED, so to get their attention and entice them to come to the haunted house, the artwork chosen needed to be scary.

So, I went to istockphoto.com (a great resource for stock photos) and typed in “scary.”  Instantly a variety of images came up for me to choose from.  I wanted something eye-catching and horror based, but not bloody or in poor taste.  Several pages in I found the pictured artwork – aha perfect!  This photo is scary, but probably wouldn’t put off other potential customers who aren’t teenagers (like adults, or younger kids) because even though we are aiming at teenagers, we also want as broad appeal as possible.

Next I chose a nice bold Halloween font (see more about that in my last post).  I decided I wanted to emphasize the word “horror” so I made that word larger and red (I also stretched the font and made it longer which is one of my favorite tricks for emphasis.)

Here we have a sample of progress so far, what do you think?  Will this poster do it’s job?

Another one is called “Monster Party” it can be downloaded free here. This font is not letters per se – it consists of black line art of various monsters, mostly from the movies – like Jack Nicholas from “The Shining”.  The picture here shows a few.  These would be perfect to use if you need to design an inexpensive Halloween flyer, because this kind of artwork is excellent for photocopying.

And last,  www.sinisterfonts.com has some really fantastic scary and gothic fonts, in fact, the whole page is a little scary!  You can get some free horror style wallpaper here too if you want to customize your computer screen for Halloween.