By following these 10 tips, you will have a good basis for making a relevant and effective advertising poster that will convince passers-by. But it still has to be finely crafted: find a professional freelance graphic designer to concoct an irresistible poster.
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| Advertising Posters |
1. Define your marketing goals
To be effective, your poster advertising must target the right people. The first step in creating an advertising poster is therefore to define the goal of your marketing campaign.
Which target do you want to reach?
As with any advertising or marketing campaign, it is important to know who the poster audience is .
Creating an aesthetically successful poster is a good thing, but at what cost if its graphic codes do not correspond to your target? Your poster would then struggle to convince and would be a real waste.
It is, therefore, necessary to carefully study the tastes of the audience to which the visual is addressed before starting the first sketches of creation.
Warning
Be careful, however, not to be a caricature, for example by thinking that it would necessarily add a lot of pink in a poster targeting a female audience.
What tone or style do you want to adopt?
Humorous, offbeat, serious ... The tone of your campaign will reflect your brand image.
It must be well thought out to be original while being consistent with your corporate identity.
What event are you promoting?
Launch of a new product, the announcement of an inauguration, promotional offer, event, show, election … Depending on the event you wish to promote, your poster will not contain the same amount of text or the same mentions.
Where will your poster be displayed?
Street marketing campaign, distribution on social networks, etc. Keep in mind that your poster may be shared on different media and be viewed in different circumstances.
Take stock to identify all the places where your poster will be distributed and in what format.
Once this brainstorming is done, you should already have a fairly precise mental vision of your future promotional poster.
2. Prioritize the key elements of your advertising poster
Then, to avoid overloading your billboard, sort through your information. Keep only the essentials: your logo, a relevant slogan, eye-catching text, and a photo or image.
It is important to make a balanced and clear poster so as not to lose your target with too much information. Also, favor an elegant and refined design.
If you multiply the visuals and text blocks, your poster will never be read. Ventilate your poster as much as possible and ensure that the various elements do not overlap and interfere with good readability. Keep only the essential information that will guide your message and not be “off-topic”.
In short, keep it as simple as possible!
Once the information to appear in the poster has been defined, it is important to prioritize it. Highlight the really important information, while avoiding the information overload that would only put off viewers.
3. Define the format of your advertising posters
The choice of the dimensions of your poster is also important: depending on the place and the display context, but also the media chose, you will need to select the appropriate size.
Do you rather need a poster that can be stuck behind a store window, a poster in a bus shelter, a kakemono, or even a large format for an outdoor advertising billboard?
It is a reflection that it is absolutely necessary to have upstream. Otherwise, you will pay a high price: once your posters are printed, it will be too late to realize that they are in the wrong format.
4. Find the visual that will make the difference
Your visual is the main element of your marketing poster. It must make an impression and convey your message as well as your slogan.
It can be a photo, but also an image, illustrations, icons… The important thing is to create a unique advertising poster.
To find out if you've made the right choice of visuals, imagine your graphic design without text or logo. If your brand is recognizable, then your choice is the right one!
5. Think of a catchy message
To grab the attention of your prospects, your catchphrase or slogan should be compelling, yet concise. The advantage of an advertising slogan is that it is easily memorized and that it can be easily reproduced on all distribution channels, digital, prints, and why not radio.
By the way, the father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy said:
“There are five times more people reading the hook than there are reading the body of the message. This means that if your hook isn't a seller, you've wasted 90% of your money. "
6. Respect the Z path of the manhole
It is very interesting to understand the meaning of an advertising poster reading, preferably by someone who sees it for the very first time.
In the West, we read from left to right, and from top to bottom.
This habit is found in the way we observe an image: the gaze tends to land first on the upper left corner of a poster, then to perform a "z" trajectory until ending in the lower corner. law. This is why we often find the logo of the brand at the bottom right.
The gaze ends its trajectory on it and it thus constitutes the last memory kept by the spectator (and therefore the most persistent). So avoid centering your logo or giving it a disproportionate size, it won't necessarily help memorize it - also make sure you don't make one of the common mistakes when creating a logo.
The goal is to keep the viewer's gaze inside the advertising poster as long as possible. We will therefore avoid as much as possible placing elements that could make it “come out”: an arrow pointing outwards, a character looking in the opposite direction, etc. Unless of course, it's intentional.
The most common mistake is to try to put everything you think is essential in the center, whatever the subject of the poster. We end up with a very dense composition in the middle and empty at the periphery.
7. Use the lines of force and perspectives
When using photo backgrounds or for a composition with a lot of elements, perspective lines are very useful in drawing the eye to specific detail.
A very present foreground, even placed on the side, will always be seen first: it is therefore not trivial and should make the viewer want to understand the rest of the scene and linger on the other elements.
The lines of force are intended to stabilize the composition while highlighting the important elements.
8. Choose the right colors
The concept of "less is more" is adaptable even for an advertising poster, especially concerning colors.
No need to load your composition with unnecessary colored elements, a well-thought-out poster must above all use the colors and more generally the graphic codes of the brand to which it refers.
Be sure to coordinate your colors to respect a certain harmony in the use of your colors in order to respect a certain harmony.
To do this, you can use a tool such as PaletteDeCouleur.net, very practical for creating colored atmospheres with shades, complements, or other associations of colors pleasing to the eye.
8. Respect the typographical rules
The typographical rules for an advertising poster are the same as for most graphic designs: don't overdo it.
Try to limit yourself to two or three different fonts. The important thing is the message: the eye should not be attracted more by a complicated drawing of letters than by the meaning of the sentence they compose.
Likewise, it is essential to use fonts that are legible. The message must be clear and easily understandable, avoid confusing it with a font that is too complex to decipher.
9. Stay true to your graphic charter
You will of course have to choose your colors according to the marketing objective of your advertising communication, but try as much as possible to use the colors and typography of your graphic charter.
pub poster
Communication campaign carried out by Studio Tata
Be careful not to make a “flashy” poster with bright colors, just to catch the eye. It would be badly perceived by consumers and you would risk losing notoriety points.
Your target audience must recognize your brand through your visual communication.
10. Imagine an engaging poster
It is difficult to calculate the impact of a poster campaign. But if you combine print and digital, it will be easier to measure your ROI.
The idea is therefore to integrate your poster into a more global marketing strategy so that it is disseminated, shared, and commented on on social networks.
For example, you can organize a competition or create a thriller advertising poster by including a QR code in your creation. You thus engage your community around your visual medium and extend the field of action of your poster campaign.
Conclusion
Creating an advertising poster takes time and expertise. There are dedicated software or online tools available, but without the expert eye of a graphic designer, your marketing poster may look amateurish.
We highly recommend that you hire one of our professional designers if you want to create the perfect advertising poster
Trust the professionals, trust BITS