Poster Composition Is An Underrated Field

Lately I've been going on a sort of event bender where I try to attend any local event possible. Doing this takes a lot of effort, and I have to keep up to date with all the posters people hang up. While I don't have a calendar, I've printed off some calendar pages for the next two months and I keep them in front of me at all times so I remember where I'm supposed to go to and when. I've found that attending a lot of events makes me feel even more productive than I had previously. It  also serves as a good break from working on the comics. 


I never really considered before now, just how much effort and thought goes into composing the perfect poster. Sure, I've made a lot of posters throughout the duration of my career, but now having seen the best the municipality has to offer I'm awestruck by the sheer variety inherent to these things. Posters for concerts, art exhibitions, book releases. I'm getting sucked into some kind of obscure subculture, drawn towards it like a moth to a flame. Like the whirlpool that forms over the drain of a bathtub. I keep a small scrap of paper and pen with me at all times, so that if I see a poster for an event which looks particularly interesting I can jot it down and then transfer it onto the calendar once I get home. 

The best posters are found on 13th Street or Broadway, where they coat the light poles like bark on an ancient tree, from top to bottom. There are posters that are months out of date taped haphazardly beneath brand new ones, and they all have one thing in common: they all have really interesting designs. Before I started doing this I had no idea just how much thought goes into arranging the objects on a blank sheet of paper so as to catch the eye of someone who might view it for a few seconds at the most before thoughtlessly walking past. 

There are also entire displays of them in windows, taped onto the glass from the inside. It creates a sort of gallery effect. I guess it has mostly to do with the combination of text and graphics. Being a cartoonist myself, I can get behind this line of thought. Placement may not seem like much, but in grabbing attention it can really make all the difference. According to psychologists, changing the arrangement of something by as much as half an inch can drastically affect the way the visual is perceived.

It's fascinating, to see the same theories used by top-level marketing firms utilized by complete amateurs who print these things off at home. They may not have the resources of a Pepsi ad or an insurance billboard, yet they abide by the same fundamental principles and take themselves just as seriously, and for that they've earned my respect, both as an art form unto themselves and as a refined discipline. 


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