If you’re looking for creative poster design ideas or themes, this guide will provide you with the poster inspiration you’ve been looking for. You’ll also find a selection of FREE poster templates to begin crafting your own creative designs.
In this article we’ll look at:
License this image via Anton Vierietin.
5 Poster Design Tips to Keep in Mind
The original and oldest form of graphic design, the humble poster has been enticing audiences into movie theaters and customers into stores since the early 20th century.
Still one of the most effective and attention-grabbing forms of visual media, creative posters really have the power to draw an audience in, whether in print or online.
Designing creative posters is an art, but that doesn’t mean that only professional poster artists can design high-impact poster layouts.
With a few key tips in mind, begin crafting really effective and creative posters that can be used for advertising events, exhibitions, or adapted as movie poster designs or character posters.
Can I make a poster myself?
Of course you can! All you need to make your own fun poster ideas come to life is design software and a poster template to use as a foundation for your design.
With a few design principles in mind (see below), you can combine color, layout, and imagery to dramatic effect, and make a highly engaging poster design in no time.
What are the pros and cons to making your own poster?
Visualizing fun poster ideas as an actual design does take a little time, and you may need to go through several iterations of your poster template until you land on the perfect design.
However, the pros of making your own posters outstrip many of the cons, including saving money on commissioning a designer, and having more control over the exact look, feel, and content you want to include on your poster.
If you feel ready to give poster design a go, brush up on the poster design basics with these top tips. . . .
Tip 1: Work on a Grid
As a starting point for your poster design, split the layout into a grid of squares, across rows and columns. Designing on a grid is a tried-and-tested technique in graphic design for bringing balance, symmetry, and order into your design.
You can lay type along a grid row or fit imagery within a grid section without risking an untidy or messy look.
It’s also a wise idea to allow for some of your grid to feature white space (negative space). Though not necessarily white in color, these ‘blank’ sections on your design should include no busy elements, such as imagery or text.
A balance of white space and areas of imagery on your poster layout will strike the perfect balancing act, drawing the eye towards important information such as titles or character portraits.
Tip 2: Establish a Hierarchy
Referring to the order of design elements on a layout, visual hierarchy is a fundamental technique for effective poster design.
As you start to build up elements and visualize your poster ideas, try to split your elements into a visual order of size, weight, and color impact, with the most important element on your design being the largest and/or boldest item on the layout.
For example, a poster title or headline might be the element with the most visual weight, which can be exaggerated using a high-contrast color and a large font size.
The second element in the hierarchy might be the poster image, which could be placed lower down on the layout, leading the eye down the page.
Other less important elements—such as subheadings, slogans, or reviews—can be placed at a smaller size and in a less eye-catching color choice, to complete the hierarchical sequence.
Tip 3: Find the Perfect Headline Font
Cool poster ideas only come to fruition when you find that pitch-perfect poster font. Big, bold, and impactful are words to keep in mind when browsing for fonts to use on your creative posters.
Think of the way that streaming service Netflix uses font styles to define the personality of poster art for each movie or TV show, creating a type-centric identity for each film choice.
For poster design, look for impactful display fonts, novelty fonts, or slab font styles to really make an impact on titles and poster headlines. You can also add to the eye-catching impact of a headline by including color, textures, or effects, such as drop shadows or glow effects.
Tip 4: Create an Audience Connection with Imagery
Many poster designs use photography or imagery to draw eyes to the poster design, and give a visual sense of what the poster is advertising, whether it’s a movie or event.
In many cases, poster artists will use imagery that forges a direct connection with the person viewing the poster, through eye contact, emotive photography, or brightly colored illustration.
A good tip is to choose a portrait of someone who appears to be looking directly at the viewer, through the camera. This follow-you-round-the-room effect is a proven technique for engaging the viewer in a visual dialogue with the poster design—meaning they simply can’t look away!
Tip 5: Striking and Simple Is Best
The earliest poster designs were often busy and crowded but, as time went by, techniques for poster design became more sophisticated and streamlined.
In the 1960s, the Swiss School of graphic design laid down the foundation for future principles of poster design, including basing a layout around a small number of strong, simple elements that create a minimalistic yet hugely effective impact.
In your own poster designs, striking and simple is always best, resulting in clear and eye-catching poster layouts that won’t confuse the eye.
Stick to a restricted color palette of two or three colors, just one or two font styles, and one strong image. Job done!
License this image via Anton Vierietin.
10 Cool Poster Design Ideas
How do you come up with a catchy poster idea?
You can source poster inspiration from movie poster design, exhibition posters, and campaign designs for events, podcasts, and social media, as well as finding more unique inspiration through wider sources, such as pop culture imagery, photography styles, or iconic cinematography.
Looking for graphic design poster ideas to capture your audience’s attention? Below, discover cool poster ideas and themes to inspire your own creative posters.
Idea 1: Use Simple Symmetry
Symmetry is a simple technique for bringing instant harmony to your poster layout.
Condense your poster design ideas into a single, striking image and place this centrally on your layout, promoting symmetrical balance on the page.
You can also use symmetrical images as a visual pointer, leading the eye in a pyramid effect towards a poster title.
This technique is often used on superhero movie posters, and movie posters featuring ensemble casts, to help bring multiple actor portraits together into one cohesive image.
Idea 2: Use a Tonal Color Palette
While high-contrast color can be an eye-catching choice for a poster layout, there’s something to be said for this more pared-back poster decoration idea, which is to use a restricted color palette of related colors to create a calm and collected poster design.
Using tonal, analogous colors (which sit next to each other on the color wheel) can be used to create a specific mood, such as an ethereal summery effect (try warm tones like yellow, orange, and pink) or a futuristic feel (for a tech-friendly palette look to sky blue, true blue, and blue-gray).
Idea 3: Experiment with Photography Techniques
Whether it’s double exposure photography, neon color filters, or nostalgic photography styles, there are plenty of different and unusual techniques to choose from to elevate your poster imagery.
Using unusual photography effects or breaking traditional photo rules can really bring an emotive edge to your poster, giving creative posters a distinctive mood, and making them a great fit for gigs, events, or festival posters.
Idea 4: Go Retro
Pay tribute to the original greats of poster design with an homage to vintage posters.
Try curvy 1970s-inspired headline fonts, black and white photography, and plenty of grunge textures to make a retro impression. If it ain’t broke. . . .
Idea 5: Build a Quirky Grid Layout
Great poster design doesn’t have to revolve around a single image. By structuring your poster layout ideas around a grid, you can introduce multiple graphics onto a poster without sacrificing neatness and visual impact.
Begin by splitting your poster page into a grid of squares, and allowing some imagery to fill a few squares across a row or column.
Keep the color theme consistent across all the images to bring the design together.
Idea 6: Use Striking Black and White
You don’t need a complex color palette to make a memorable impression with your poster ideas. A monochrome color choice can bring a really graphic edge to a poster design, with black and white making for the most high-contrast color pairing.
If you want to create a minimalist poster design, consider using black and white, and geometric graphics, to create a simple yet striking poster layout.
Idea 7: Go 3D
Give your creative posters an eye-popping effect by using 3D graphics in your designs.
Try molten liquid backgrounds or futuristic 3D shapes to create an abstract, psychedelic style for art exhibitions, club night posters, or event flyers.
Stick to pastel colors or a neon color palette to maintain an ethereal effect.
License this poster template via Tanya Shulger.
Idea 8: Taste the Rainbow!
Some of the best poster layout ideas don’t rely on advertising something specific—instead, act as a medium of artistic expression.
Such is the case with the hyper-colorful poster designs of poster artist Vratislav Pecka, aka PosterLad, which have been featured in exhibitions and art presses around the world.
Take inspiration from PosterLad’s bold and expressive use of color and shape by experimenting with rainbow-hued poster designs in your projects.
An instant way to give a serious dopamine boost to otherwise simple graphics, rainbow color palettes won’t fail to bring your fun poster ideas to life.
Idea 9: Embrace Botanical Beauty
Art Nouveau posters at the turn of the 20th century indulged in ornate organic imagery, using floral decoration to embellish poster designs with borders and frames.
Revisit the botanical opulence of this era with your own poster making ideas, using botanical imagery to bring a flourish to poster typography and backgrounds.
Use a floral clipart bundle, or discover even more botanical illustrations in the Shutterstock library, to embellish your poster designs.
Idea 10: Unlock the Power of Illustration
Many movie posters and commercial advertising posters use photography, so you can give a poster design a real point of difference by opting for illustration instead.
Often used for independent events or creative marketing campaigns, illustrated posters are a super fun way of bringing your cool poster ideas to life.
For posters, often the simpler the illustration the better. Focus on trying to represent the event or product in the most concise way possible using naive-style imagery, simple icons, or line illustrations that can be enlivened with a generous splash of color.
How to Create Your Own Poster
Hopefully these cool poster ideas will have inspired you to create your own creative posters. But where to begin?
Creating your own poster design is simple! All you need is access to design software, such as Adobe Photoshop or an online design app like Shutterstock Create, some free time, and some fun poster ideas.
You can start from scratch or use a poster template as a basis for your poster design.
See below for a few key tips for realizing your poster ideas, as well as some recommended poster templates to try.
What Size Should a Poster Be?
Posters come in a range of sizes, which depend on the end purpose of your poster design.
For digital sharing, a standard portrait size such as A3 or Tabloid will work fine, but for printed posters, you should look up the best size to suit your project.
Check out this complete guide to poster sizes to choose your ideal size before you begin designing.
How to Print Your Poster
If you’re printing your poster at a large size, you will need to send your design to be printed through a local print shop or online print-on-demand (POD) service.
For smaller flyer-size posters or letterbox flyers, you can print your poster designs from a home or office printer.
Note that the print finish won’t be as durable as those printed professionally. Something to keep in mind if your poster will be displayed in outdoor conditions.
5 FREE Poster Templates
A poster template is a good foundation for creating a unique poster design, and makes the poster design process much quicker and smoother.
Simply switch up colors and text, and you’ll have an awesome poster design for an event or business advert in no time!
Here are some of our favorite free poster templates to get you started.
1. Geometric Poster Template (FREE)
Drop your chosen photo into this geometric frame poster design to advertise sale events, retail openings, or social events. Easily editable in Shutterstock Create.
Free geometric poster template via Shutterstock Create.
2. Store Opening Poster Template (FREE)
Use this simple and classic poster template to create poster designs and flyer layouts for store openings or retail events.
Free retail poster template via Shutterstock Create.
3. Typographic Poster Template (FREE)
This free poster template from InDesignSkills can be easily adapted for cultural events, or as an exhibition poster or festival poster.
Free typographic poster template via Adobe InDesign.
4. Holiday Sale Poster Template (FREE)
Advertise seasonal sales or holiday events with this holiday poster template featuring a cheerful red color palette and playful typography.
Free holiday sale poster template via Shutterstock Create.
5. Church Event Poster Template (FREE)
For social gatherings, church events, or local events, you can adapt this free poster template to include important information against a simple photographic background.
Free men’s group poster template via Shutterstock Create.
Learn more about poster and flyer design with these helpful articles:
License this cover image via Anton Vierietin.
Recently viewed
${excerpt}