Good and Bad Poster Design

Nicely Designed Posters

GOOD: A concert poster for an electronic artist is often very heavy on visuals, but this minimalistic approach works well. The neon-themed design and purple/blue elements contrast well against the black brick background and white text. The elements are neatly and simply organized in a logical order, while the type size ensures easy reading.

GOOD: A movie poster for Mulholland Dr. This design does a good job at communicating the basic idea and mood of the movie. The viewer can derive this is a mystery story by the way the woman (Naomi Watts) is looking off-screen with an apprehensive facial expression. At the top, the darkened photo of the Hollywood sign communicates ominousness. The viewer knows, by the poster, that this is a dark mystery film has something to do with Hollywood and the woman on the phone, making the design effective in its goal.

 GOOD: This is a poster for a cookout for a church. This design is simple but also visually interesting, with the contrast of the colors of the abstract flames which overlap to create depth in the image. The date is large and in a place where the eye naturally wants to look, which makes the information memorable. The ample negative space puts emphasis on the few design elements present: the logo and organization name, the date, the name of the function, and the small text paragraph. The poster succeeds in not bombarding the viewer with too many elements/information. This poster captures the attention of the viewer and presents them with easily readable information.

Ugly and Ineffective 

BAD: This design is graphically bland and fails to command the attention of the viewer. The Cream/yellowish color gradient looks antiquated. The elements are organized in a centered format which makes it uninteresting. The poster looks like it was made in MS paint. The logo element seems jammed-in sitting in the lower left corner and should have been given more prominence. To improve this design, social media icons would have helped the poster establish credibility, accompanying the red Facebook link at the bottom.

BAD: This design has elements that are well organized, but suffers from poor color selection. The piercing neon yellow is difficult for the eye to look at and makes the viewer turn away before they can read the information in the small print. The icons at the bottom of the page are nearly indecipherable due to the lack of contrast between white and this shade of yellow. To improve, avoid using such a color that is painful to view.

BAD: Here is a poster with a very straight-forward design for an animal rights and environmental agenda. The poster works except for the bottom third. With already so much information in small text above, the map and its adjacent text is superfluous – there are too many websites listed, all in full “https://”. The YouTube link is especially bad as one would have to type the entire unique url into their browser, which almost nobody has ever done. Too improve: shorten URLs, include icons, get rid of google map.