Posters What Are Printed Posters are unique type of mass communication tools that when well designed standout even in a crowded place much unlike simple journal papers pasted onto billboards. For a long time now posters have been in use as a tool of mass communication visual medium to promote products and make ideological propaganda. Many types of printed posters have evolved over the years precisely to meet different purposes and budgets. While during wartime, posters were used for making propaganda, persuasion, and motivation much like in the election campaigns; they are also used to make commercial and informational announcements these days.

The erstwhile Soviet Union had produced a whole host of propaganda posters, which are now regarded as iconic representatives of the Great Patriotic War. Poster Sizes And Shapes To Choose First of all, there is no fixity of size for posters; they can be made in any number of shapes and sizes depending on your purpose and more on the place where you are going to stick them. However, large posters are rather highly attention grabbing than smaller ones and thus score over their smaller cousins, both cost wise as well as effectiveness.

Consider different sizes for posters for different purposes- A4 is good for indoor advertisement but you can also experiment with A3 in shops if they are allowed there. You may also want to consider the smaller A5 to stick on the car windows of your group members so that their friends and family notice them whilst your members drive around. The only thing you need to be cautious of with small posters is the fact that a very high importance is invariably attached to the aesthetics. What Constitutes An Effective Poster So, then what makes a poster effective? This is not an easy question to answer particularly because the audience behavior varies significantly from one target group to another.

For example, an audience of a commercial poster may react significantly differently from that of the audience of a poster carrying political messages. Nevertheless, here is the common thread that runs through all these.
1. First, the header of a poster should orient the audience in no time
2. Next, the poster should draw the audience attention to the subject
3. The specific sections of a poster should be easy to locate
4. Fourth, the individual sections must be so designed that they don’t take time to read and are easy
5. Finally, although there is no hard and fast rule that effective posters should not be in glaring colors, they are invariably pleasing to the eye with a great color combination Critical Mistakes To Avoid With Posters It is not just enough to incorporate a few good points as if it were some religious mandatory ritual. However cautious, mistakes can just sneak in spoiling the sport in the end.

Watch out for the common mistakes such as
1. Poor layout: People want to look more closely if a poster is well laid out because its uncluttered and attractive layout. This is something that displays messages to decipher easily.
2. Poor headlines: Long headlines, confusing line breaks and ineffective or soft language take longer to decipher or readers just look away. At the same time, you should also need to spare a thought for the general alignment of the overall headline. Left or center alignment works just fine for most of the cases.
3. Wrong choice of graphics and fonts: The less I talk of wrong choice of graphics the better for you just can’t afford to have an inappropriate graphic that is completely out of sync with the headline. So also, using alien and harder to comprehend fonts or keeping text fonts larger or equal in size than headline is odd. Remember, you are designing posters for audience and not to please your own self. Hiring an expert would be a better option in a tricky situation than crying overt a lost cause later on.