Design Basics: Posters

Above all else, the goal of the poster is quite simple: you want people to look at it longer than they will any of your print ads. Sure, this goes for almost any kind of advertisement, but your poster is going to embrace this mentality like no other form of advertisement will for the simple fact that, unlike all your other print ads, posters are way bigger.

Remember this also: people don’t take posters home with them, they don’t stuff them in their pocket, and they don’t look at them from the comfort of their home. A poster is only going to be seen at the location you put it and it needs to convey its entire message as fast as it can, because people won’t be looking at that poster for very long.

The question I ask now and I’m sure a lot of people are thinking is how do you get the most out of your posters then? Even more than that, why even bother to use them if they have such a limited scope of effectiveness?

The charm of large format posters is that they can grab someone like no other kind of advertisement can. Every other form of advertising simply takes more time or can’t stack up when it comes to the quality of the image.

Take for example a postcard or flyer. Now, like a poster, both are going to grab someone’s eye right away and both don’t have room to really say too much. But both are going to be on lower quality paper and both aren’t going to be able to support the kind of visual flare a color poster can achieve.

Think about photo poster printing. A poster can support a high quality picture unlike anything a flyer would lay claim to. This is what will really make someone look over at your poster. It’s always the picture that grabs my eye first, and your poster stands as the best style of advertising to get that high quality image out there.

Given that you know people aren’t going to tear your poster down and take it home with them, or you hope they won’t, you need to make sure you can tell them what you have to say as quickly as possible.

Get to the point and only focus on the point. Is it a sale? Tell them that and be done with it. Maybe you have a grand opening or new product release. This is the key point of your poster and all you should have to worry about mentioning.

The more your poster has to say the less likely it is people will care enough to read it all. I’ve seen all sorts of posters that only have six or seven words on them total. I can tell you this, I read everything those posters had to say. The more complicated your poster starts to get the less likely it is people will bother reading any of it.

I’ve designed many posters myself using all sorts of different designing programs. With a program like CorelDRAW you can pump out some truly marvelous looking posters from the comfort of your own home.

Design Basics: Flyers

Compared to other forms of advertising, designing flyers should be a breeze, right? After all, the flyer is one of the most basic forms of advertising there is. You have a single sheet of paper to worry about and nothing else.

I won’t try to claim that a flyer is as complicated as a brochure to design, but there are some important details to be aware of before you go off and start designing them yourself.

These days I see a lot of flyers I just know people are making at home using something like QuarkXpress. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, but I think you’ll be better served knowing more about flyer design before you go off and start making your own.

The first and most important thing about a flyer is the primary message you’re trying to convey. If your goal is to make some nightclub flyers than you want to decide what it is about the nightclub that you think will be your best selling point.

Let’s say you have a certain night that has great drink specials. This is the main point you want people to be aware of, which means this should be the biggest thing on your flyer. You want to grab people’s attention right away before they can throw that flyer on the ground, and we all know that’s what most people are going to do.

I see a lot of flyers that seem to have no particular point it emphasizes. Nothing is bigger than the rest, and so nothing really jumps out at me. Those are the flyers I drop in the first trash can I happen to pass.

A flyer needs to jump out and grab a person’s eyes. It needs to make sure they don’t look at anything else until they’re done looking at your flyer. Whether your flyer is for a nightclub or your plan on making some business flyers, you have to make sure your selling point is prominent.

Along with a strong message you need to have some strong visuals. A person is likely to see the image before they see the message, so give them something they’ll stop to look at. You could go for the extreme out of the ordinary kinds of images or the more colorful, flashy look. What you plan on selling will be what will decide the best kind of image to pair up with your message. Only you can know what that is.

And of course, make sure you have plenty of flyers made up. The cost to print flyers is cheap compared to almost any other form of advertising. Take advantage of it to get as many flyers as you can. The more people you hand them to the more opportunities you’ll have to find those people who will take your message to heart.

If you want to design your own flyer, by all means, go right ahead, just be aware of what all goes into them rather than waste your time on something people like me will just dump in the trash.

How to Get The Right Words Out On Small Marketing Real Estate

When you think of “real estate” you probably think of a house or maybe a condominium. However, in the marketing world it can take on an entirely different definition. The real-estate marketing post card variety relates to the size of the space upon which you can put your message.

As postcard is obviously small real estate. This comes with obvious benefits relating to costs saved on mailing and full color postcard printing. However, it forces the sender to creatively convey their message without voluminous text. All key points of the pitch need to be included on both sides of the card.

If you only have a given piece of information on one side of the card you face the reader missing it entirely. The recipient of the card may very well only read one side. If this happens the text on the reverse side is about as worthwhile of putting text on the sticky side while label printing.

Color is critical with postcards. They must immediately grab the attention of the reader and entice them to continue perusing the remaining text. Inclusion of your web site address is very helpful towards taking full advantage of limited space in a real-estate marketing post card. This enables to transition to a much larger parcel of “land”. Don’t leave postcards out of your overall marketing plan.