Poster Making
Senior 3 · Fine Arts
Poster Making
Lesson 3 of 4
25 min
Read the poster below from top to bottom. "JOHN" is huge; each line after it is smaller, until "EXAMINED" is quite small. The lettering is laid out like an eye-test chart. If you struggle with the last lines, you have felt the poster's message for yourself: some children who seem slow in class simply cannot see well. The colours are few: black, red and a warm cream. In this lesson you will learn how colour and lettering make a poster readable, and how they make it persuasive.
Definition
Typeface: a designed family of letters, such as Arial. A font is one style and size of it, such as Arial Bold 24 point.
Serif: a small stroke at the end of a letter's main lines; sans-serif type has none.
Weight: the thickness of the letter strokes: light, regular, bold, black.
Leading: the space between lines of text. Tracking: the even spacing between all the letters in a word or line.
Legibility: how easily letters can be recognised, especially at a distance.
Value contrast: the difference in lightness between two colours, for example between text and its background.
The first job of colour on a poster is legibility. What matters most is the difference in lightness between words and background, not the difference in hue. Yellow and white are different hues but almost equal in lightness, so yellow words on white vanish. Red and green are complements (Unit 2), but they are similar in lightness; they vibrate where they meet and are the pair most often confused by people with colour-blindness. Test a colour pair by viewing it in greyscale: if the words disappear, the contrast is too low.
The second job is feeling. Colours carry associations, which designers use to persuade:
| Colour | Common associations | Typical poster use |
|---|---|---|
| Red | danger, urgency, energy, love | warnings, sales, calls to action |
| Yellow | attention, light, optimism | caution signs, highlights, headlines on dark grounds |
| Green | nature, health, growth, "go" | environment and health campaigns |
| Blue | calm, trust, water, cleanliness | health services, water, banks |
| Black and white | seriousness, clarity, formality | serious notices, maximum contrast |
Associations are not fixed rules: they change between cultures and contexts, so check what a colour means to your audience. Use a limited palette, one dominant colour, one supporting colour and one accent, plus black or white. A complementary accent, such as a yellow-orange button on a blue-violet ground, pulls the eye straight to the call to action.
Lettering speaks before it is read. A heavy, condensed sans-serif shouts "urgent"; a classic serif suggests tradition and reliability; rounded letters feel friendly; script feels personal but is hard to read from a distance. Choose a style that matches the message and the audience.
Reading distance. A sign-makers' rule of thumb is about 2.5 cm of capital-letter height for every 3 m of viewing distance for comfortable reading. Treat it as a starting point, then test your printed poster from where people will really stand.
Worked example 1: headline size for a corridor
Ndayisaba's poster will be read from 6 m away. Using the rule of thumb, how tall should the capital letters of the headline be? If the subheading is half that size, how tall are its capitals?
Headline: 2.5 cm for every 3 m, and , so .
Subheading: , comfortable from about 3 m, which suits someone who has stopped to read.
Worked example 2: fixing a colour scheme
A poster for a tree-planting day has light green words on a mid-green background, with the date in red. From across the room, nothing can be read. Diagnose and fix it.
Diagnosis. Light green and mid-green are close in lightness, so the value contrast is low; red on green also vibrates and is hard for colour-blind viewers.
Fix. Keep green as the dominant colour, since it suits the theme, but make it dark; set the headline in white or cream; put the date in a yellow box with dark text. Check the result in greyscale.
<em>Contrast In Colour: Visual Hierarchy In Poster Design</em>, from Gareth David Studio. Watch how changing only the colour changes what you notice first, then try the greyscale test on one of the examples.
Warning
Too many fonts and effects. Shadows, outlines, gradients and five typefaces at once make a poster look amateur and hard to read.
Colour alone is not enough. Some viewers, more often men than women, have a colour-vision deficiency, so never let colour be the only difference; change lightness, size or shape too.
Tip
Greyscale and step back. View your poster in black and white from across the room. If the headline still jumps out, the colour and type are working.
Practice
What is the difference between a typeface and a font?
Explain why yellow text on a white background is hard to read.
Give the main colour you might choose for (a) a clean-water campaign and (b) a fire-safety warning, and explain each choice.
Using the rule of thumb, how tall should headline capitals be for a poster read from 9 m?
A headline is 12 cm tall. Using the 4 : 2 : 1 hierarchy, how tall are the subheading and the body text?
Analyse the eye-chart poster: how do its typography and colour support its message?
Design task. Choose a palette of three colours and one type family for your poster. Make a test sheet showing the headline in three colour combinations, check each in greyscale, and choose one with reasons.
1. A typeface is a whole family of letter designs; a font is one style and size of it.
2. Yellow and white are almost the same lightness, so the value contrast is too low for the letters to stand out.
3. (a) Blue: associated with water, cleanliness and calm. (b) Red, with yellow or black: associated with danger and urgency, and highly visible.
4. , and .
5. Subheading ; body text .
6. The shrinking lines copy an eye chart, so readers experience difficulty seeing small letters, which is the message. Black on cream gives strong contrast; red is kept for the boy's jumper, which draws attention to him; the few colours keep it clear.
7. Check: three combinations shown, a greyscale test of each, and a choice justified by contrast and meaning.
Think of a brand or campaign you know well in Rwanda. Without looking, can you name its colours and describe its lettering? What does that tell you about the power of colour and type?
Sources and credits
