How to Design Typographic Posters - Yes I'm a Designer (2024)

FAQs

What is a typographic poster? ›

Typography posters are unique and creative ways for you to communicate textual information to your target audiences. This type of poster is more dynamic, aesthetically pleasing, and eye-catching than typical posters when you do it right.

Establish a mood and tone

Similarly to how typography conveys personality, it also helps establish the mood and tone of a graphic design piece. In this way, typography visually brings out a brand's values, without needing to explicitly state what those values are.

Whether you're a beginner or seasoned graphic designer, you can make eye-catching posters in minutes. Easy-to-use templates for social media, web, and print. Adobe Express is poster design software made easy. Create graphics, web pages, and video stories in minutes.

At its core, a poster is made up of four key features: a title, graphic(s), text, and white space. Layout, flow, and color affect the order and style of these four key features.

One important rule of typography when using it for graphic design is to keep a limit on how many fonts are used within a single page. Typically, fonts are grouped according to a style family, and using unrelated font families or using too many different fonts can end up taking away from the content.

In a nutshell, typography is everything to do with the design and selection of text in your design. This includes the smallest detail of individual letter forms, the arrangement of letters into words, sentences, and lines, and the setting of larger blocks of text like paragraphs which we often call body copy.

This process requires the designer to go through a series of decisions like selecting the proper typeface, choosing the point size, adjusting kerning and line spacing and coming up with a layout that makes sense. This can be done quickly and easily using laptops, computers and even phones.

Typography Basics

There are five basic classifications of typefaces: serif, sans serif, script, monospaced, and display. As a general rule, serif and sans serif typefaces are used for either body copy or headlines (including titles, logos, etc.), while script and display typefaces are only used for headlines.

There are twelve basic principles of design: contrast, balance, emphasis, proportion, hierarchy, repetition, rhythm, pattern, white space, movement, variety, and unity.

Visual hierarchy, negative space, a main point of focus, consistent branding and colors, and clear but fun typography all make a poster shine.

How to make a typography poster in Photoshop? ›

Create a new layer (Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + N) called “Pattern” and use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill it with the selected pixel pattern. Then, reduce the “Pattern” layer's Opacity to 10%. In the Layers Panel, select all 4 layers and go to Layer > New > Group from Layers to create a layer group for our poster's background.

Carefully trace the letter design on the back of the sheet with a graphite pencil. Turn the sheet over again and lay centrally on the canvas. Colour over the letters where your pencil lines are on the other side to transfer the graphite onto the canvas. This will give you a guide for your typography.

Poster dimensions vary, but 48” x 36” (landscape or portrait) is a common poster size. Always size your poster according to the requirements of the conference or assignment. Setting dimensions before editing or adding components to the poster will reduce the amount of time needed to readjust the poster later.