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9 Ways to Use Color Effectively on Your Posters

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Choosing the colors for your posters is one of the more important, and tricky, aspects of the design. The purpose of color in poster printing is to attract attention, guide a viewer from one piece of information to the next, and create a uniform look and feel. The following 9 rules for using color effectively on your posters will help you avoid a color design catrastrophe.

Rule 1: Control yourself - Don't go overboard when choosing colors. Too many will confuse a viewer, distract from your message, and, well, honestly make your poster look like a tie-die design that's gone horribly wrong. Limit your design to only 2-4 colors for a much more controlled design.

Rule 2: Think Contrast - Using colors with contrast will make each aspect of the design more noticeable. Be especially picky when working with the colors of your text and background. Too little contrast will make your text unreadable. Only use light colors for text if you background is a dark color, but if you are new to design, it's safest to stick with a light background with black letters.

Rule 3: Maintain consistency - Use certain colors for certain aspects of your poster design. For instance, the background should be one color, the headline another color, and the body text a third color.

Rule 4: Highlight vital information - Color is an excellent tool for creating emphasis. If your poster contains a box of important information, use a color that contrasts with the rest of your poster to draw your viewers' eyes. The headline should always be a highly noticeable color so that viewers know to read this text first.

Rule 5: Send the right message - Different colors portray different meanings and evoke certain feelings. Use bright colors, such as orange and yellow, for a happy or summer feel; dark blue, forest green, maroon, and a browner yellow work for a corporate message; black, deep purple, and vivid red are great for a dark look.

Rule 6: Use appropriate colors - Movie posters, even for family-friendly movies, use dark colors such as black, grey, red, and deep blues. Also think about your brand. If your brand relies strongly on a certain color scheme, such as Coca Cola with red and white, then try to incorporate these colors into at least one aspect of your design.

Rule 7: Avoid too much of a saturated color - Very bright colors, such as a vivid red, should not be used for large blocks of color in a design. You want your posters to attract viewers, not hurt their eyes. If viewers walk away from your poster seeing spots, it's a good indicator that you used too much of a highly saturated color.

Rule 8: Consider your audience - Certain colors are hard to read, so it can't be emphasized enough how careful you need to be when choosing color for your text. Some colors simply cannot be seen by older viewers or those with color blindness, such as light green and bright yellows. If the majority of your audience are senior citizens or middle-aged or older men, then avoid using any color except black for text.

Rule 9: Attraction is key - If you choose what seem to be all the right colors but your poster doesn't look attractive when you preview it, go back to the drawing board and begin again. Professional designers create several versions of a poster to try out different blends of color and layouts to see what looks the best, so don't get discouraged if you end up with 5 or more sample designs for your poster.