Everyone knows that visual appeal is everything when you’re talking about printing marketing posters. What you may not know is that this time, “everything” isn’t enough. You don’t just need to give your audience pretty pictures. You need to make sure you’re getting to the heart of the matter, and the only way to do that is to make sure you aren’t just using any old image looking for its 15 min of fame.
5 Images to Use When Designing and Printing Posters
1. People
People relate to people. To advertise a product or event you need to do it in a way your target market is going to relate to. They have to put themselves in their shoes. People don’t usually relate to sandboxes or swings (although I’ve found myself commiserating with my footstool a time or two.) They do, however, relate to people.
2. Places
Remember those sandboxes and swings we were talking about earlier? No one’s saying they don’t have a place when you’re printing marketing posters. Places can have an incredible impact on your audience, particularly if it’s a place they associate with a particular group or event. (For example, empty football fields and basketball courts have an amazing impact when you’re talking about school budget cuts.)
3. Shockers
Ever looked at a poster and just gone “Ugh!”? That, my friends, is what we call going for shock value. The point of shock value is usually to illustrate a reality that exists, but that your viewing audience doesn’t really want to see.
Shock value is used often by non-profits when printing posters as a call to action. Abused pets and starving children aren’t anyone’s ideal reality, and donors are willing to donate money to make the reality of those images go away.
4. Close-ups
Imagine you’re looking at a poster of a bunch of dogs running around. Now you’re looking at another one, same dogs, but this time you have a close-up of their faces. We as a society almost instinctively disassociate ourselves with advertising. Close-ups personalize the subject of the image, making it easier to relate to and harder to ignore.
5. Contrasts
There are tons of ways you can use contrast in images when printing posters. Claritin’s ads that incorporate both black and white and color as a before and after are a perfect example. Contrast makes it easy to illustrate the benefits of your product or service, since it can be used to illustrate a difference between the buyer’s current reality and the one you’re going to show them.