What are the six basic principles of poster design?

With the development of the design industry, poster design is gradually diversified, no matter the type of things to be promoted or the creative angle. So, what basic items should be paid attention to in the design process? Or, are there any basic principles that we need to follow? Next, let's study together.

1. Consistency principle

We must face the fact that designing posters, like designing any other graphic art, can easily lead to confusion. Photographer? I didn't shoot well. Copy? They couldn't make a final decision until the last second. Marketing staff? They change their minds every two minutes.

In the design process, the designer must have a clear sequence of the whole process and implement it one by one. Poster design must be consistent from the beginning, including title, material selection, photos and signs. If there is no unification, posters will become confusing and difficult to read. All design elements must be combined into an organic whole in an appropriate way.

How can we design consistent works? Let's list a few principles:

2. Relevance principle

To make the works consistent, the first principle is to adopt the principle of relevance, which can also be called grouping. Relevance is based on a natural principle: birds of a feather flock together, and people are divided into groups. If we see all the components put together in order on a page, we will try to understand them. We always think of them as a group-we don't care whether these different parts are really similar or related. This is a bit like the principle of "participation in crime".

Poster designers can realize this relevance principle in many ways. First of all, grouping people, things and words can improve the effect of information dissemination. It is conceivable that many billboard advertisements are composed of a photo of a consumer, a product picture and advertising words. For character types (children? Old man? The choice of overworked parents is inevitably associated with products. If people's photos are handled well, it's like consumers saying "I always use Bleacho brand bleach" instead of a hard-wired advertising slogan.

Second, all the parts together can produce a stronger impact force than a single loose structure. When several items are very similar (for example, several different watches are chained together), the audience's eyes can naturally move from one watch to another. These objects form a visual unit, which can give the audience a single message instead of an indirect message.

If all the items in the poster are very similar, then the composition of a group will make the poster more attractive to others. Other elements will be considered secondary by the audience.

3. The principle of repetition

Another way to make works consistent is to repeat shapes, colors or some numerical values. When you see a design element in a plane, its different parts are reused, and our eyes will naturally follow them. Sometimes even if we don't put them together, our vision will still treat them as a whole. We subconsciously drew a line between them.

The easiest way to apply repetition is to create a pattern in the background of the poster and then apply it repeatedly. These repeated patterns in the background will produce very interesting visual and composition effects, and then connect the elements of the background and the foreground.

Another way to use repetition is to guide the audience's eyes to pay attention to an important information, logo or picture by repeating a line of elements. Repetitive elements can create a path, guide our eyes and make the audience curious-what is the other end? This is actually a way of telling stories and attracting the audience to continue reading.

Repetition is also an effective strategy to persuade the audience to compare some product posters. For example, we may put a dozen shoes on the advertising poster, but each pair is different. The main message (shoes) is easy for the audience to feel, because this item is used repeatedly in the poster, and then the audience will carefully observe the different styles of various shoes.

Another popular design technique is to arrange all the same things together, but one of them is different, so as to achieve unexpected results. For example, you can design 15 squares and arrange them into a square, where 14 is blue and one is pink, and it contains the company logo. It is conceivable that this pink color block will be the focus of the audience.

Of course, the principle of repetition can also produce a consistent effect when designing a series of posters, whether they are put together or separated at the same time. For example, a series of outdoor advertisements for a summer concert, repeating the main elements can produce a sense of strength. When you see one of them, you will think of the other. Repetition of position, color, size or image can enhance recognition and make the audience notice all the information you want to convey.

4. The principle of continuity

Is there any other way to create consistent works? Go on! As you can see in the above example, it is usually used with repetition. When the designer designs in a continuous way, the objects in the work are combined to guide the audience to another location.

This method is generally realized by linear effect. When we see a line, our eyes instinctively follow it to see where the line will go.

This method can make the pictures in the poster guide the audience's eyes to the information or brand we want to convey. But if we don't use pictures, but graphics made of words, it is also a good choice.

Add background color

If every element in your work has no * * similarity in shape, color or appearance, how can you unify your work? A simple solution is to put all these elements in a solid color area.

This method seems to evade the essence of the problem. Why do you have to put unrelated elements together? Generally speaking, we don't handle it this way. For most commercial posters, you need to make your poster convey the information you want to convey quickly. We usually use related shapes or colors.

For some artistic events or posters, the audience will take the time to understand the meaning of each part by themselves. However, some discordant elements can sometimes convey an interesting and experimental visual effect. Sometimes, an advertiser will ask all the objects to be combined in surreal form, and all the irrelevant elements will be placed in a large background color area, which can make the audience feel that they are related.

6. The principle of coordination

Whether it is a coordinated composition or an uncoordinated composition, the layout of the poster can produce a strong visual effect. Because breaking the balance will create tension. For children, we know to keep them away from potentially dangerous things, such as leaning trees, rocks, furniture or ladders. So the unbalanced composition also makes us feel this way. Will we fall? Will something hit us?

When looking at a work, we always imagine that there will be a vertical central axis and a symmetrical composition on both sides. Coordination is particularly important for design, because the poster always appears as a single individual, and there is nothing around it to make it have other visual support points (others, such as the design of magazine advertisements, adjacent pages or other surrounding elements can be used as support points).