Here's the scenario: Your high school is putting on a musical, perhaps the Wizard of Oz or perhaps something else, and you have been given the job of designing a suitable poster for this production.
You may start off in Publisher using either a sign template that will be heavily modified, or perhaps a blank print publication. It's probably easiest to start off with a blank template and develop your own look from there.
When you start something like this you need to have a few things straight in your head.
- What are the colors you'll use for your poster? Your color scheme should make sense and be appropriate to your play.
- For example, were the green and yellow on Linden's Wizard of Oz poster meant to represent the Emerald City, or the school's official colors?
- Why does the Anne of Green Gables (below) poster make such a heavy use of green?
- Most posters have two fonts. One is used for the title and the other for the details of the musical.
- The fonts are carefully chosen and are certainly not random. Which fonts represent your musical the best?
- What sort of image or images would be appropriate for your poster?
- Most musical posters tend to have one strong image, or a composite of smaller images rather than a number of small pictures scattered across the page.
- Should the image be a representation of what you're doing (a drawing, silhouette or something like that) or a more literal image such as a picture?
- Do you want to include a picture of the stars?
- Are they famous enough that anyone would come just for them?
- They're high school students. Does it matter to the outside world who they are?
- Be sure to identity details.
- Where does the event happen?
- When does it take place?
- Who is running the event?
- How much does it cost?
- Where can someone get tickets? This is surprisingly important. Few people will go to get tickets if you don't tell them where they can get them. Go figure.
- Include:
- an address,
- phone number
- and website.
- Positioning.
- Should you give the title of the musical first and then have a picture, or a picture and then the title? Which is more likely to grab the attention of passers-by?
- An attractive picture (or star of the musical) might be attention getting, but the title of a well known musical might also help.
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