Ekeshwar Hatwal is an eminent artist and a Head of Department at ARCH College of Design and Business. He has vast experience in mediums like oil paint, watercolors, printmaking, sculptures, sketching, and drawings. In this article, he tells us about the art Poster Design.
Poster Design is a Design which can be done anywhere, by anyone. This is a very old medium. In a society, where people have a lot of problems, posters are used more often.
There are two languages used in poster making- verbal language and visual language.
A poster layout generally has 5 elements. The headline is the first and very important element. It is the central idea of our poster and sub-headings are used to elaborate the subject.
We use fonts for sub-headings which are relatively smaller in size than the heading. An illustrator is added to the poster which can be seen by the people from a distance and catches the attention of people. Copy or body copy is the detailed message of the subject.
Address and logo are the last elements. Posters are placed at places which have a large footfall. Places like railway stations, malls, and other public places are ideally used for placing posters.
In China, posters were very popular at a point of time. That was the time of Cultural Revolution.
There is a saying in Urdu:
‘Ab kahin se bhi nazar aati nahin koi daraar
Ghar ki har deewar par chipke hain itne ishtehaar’
Posters have been a potent tool of the revolutionaries, movements of students, political parties and employees.
When mainstream media ignore ideas and people’s woes, posters become a very powerful tool. The poster is also a work of art, which has a very beautiful composition, its layout is very attractive and looking at it gives pleasure to the onlookers.