Complete And Professional Color Posters

If you look at posters, you will see the marked differences between those that are skilled in the design for poster printing and those that are just novices. It takes experience in the software for poster printing and design to make it look more complete and professional. Now, if you think you lack the skills and experience in proper color poster printing and design, you do not have to worry though. In this article I will teach you a few design tricks to make your color posters look more complete and professional.

1. Add texture to backgrounds.

One thing that is missing from most amateur poster designs is texture. Their backgrounds usually are plain white, or any other plain color. While of course, most backgrounds should be simple like that, for posters, too much background space will make it look empty or incomplete. To avoid this from happening, you should try to practice the great tradition of adding “texture elements” to your background.

By texture elements though, I do not mean adding ONLY things like mosaic, feather, satin, bricks or other texture effects from your design software. There are also other effects such as lighting and shadow effects, the addition of light symbols and watermark images or even the use of complimentary or contrasting colors which can add “texture” to backgrounds.

Using these techniques can help you lead people’s eyes to the important elements of your color poster design. The empty background can be your tool to improve the overall look of the poster making it more effective. So do not just use a simple background, add some texture into it.

2. Add gradients to block colors.

Now, for your colored objects, it is possible to make them look more complete and professional by adding color gradients into them. Color gradients are basically a coloring technique where one color can blend seamlessly to the next. It has the effect of making objects appear more distinct from the two dimensional plane. A simple colored square for example can look like a cube or a uplifted button just by adding the color variation. Moreover, it makes things less boring as you can use different related hues to make things look more “Real” in a way. So do not just use that “paint bucket” tool all over. Try some gradients.

3. Add shadows to lift objects.

Adding shadows of course are also very useful for a color poster design. They tend to make objects look more three dimensional, almost literally lifting the design element off the poster page. This effect is definitely useful for text, logos and other symbols so that they can be distinguished from the base plane of your design.

4. Fade edges or reduce opacity to integrate objects.

You should also try to face edges and reduce the opacity of certain layer images to integrate them better unto your design. Most novices think that cutting and pasting things into the poster is enough, but that is wrong. Objects must be integrated seamlessly into a design and they must look like they really below together or are from the same image. This can simply be done by using special digital brushes and the opacity settings of layers in your favorite design program. This should make your poster designs look more “whole” eliminating that tendency to appear just like a collage of pasted images.

5. Adjust image settings and effects to improve photographs.

Finally, if you are using photographs for your poster designs, do not forget to adjust some of its settings and effects. Things like the brightness and contrast, color corrections and other effects can improve your poster photographs quite greatly. You can make pictures really clear, or really subdued for great effect. So play with the image settings for photographs a little and see how you can apply it for your color posters.

I hope these simple design tips can be useful for you. You do not have to be an expert to make your brochure printing look complete and professional. So try these nice design tips!