Poster Design Tips

Posters are a great way to get out your prevention message to a large audience. Below you'll find helpful information and tips about designing your own posters.

Tips on Poster Design

Tip 1: Use Existing Posters for Ideas.

Look at existing (commercial and non-commercial) posters focused on sexual assault prevention or other health issues. Be sure that you are aware of all copyright laws.

Things to look for in existing posters:

What do you like about the particular poster campaign?
How can you incorporate these aspects into your own poster development?

Tip 2: Get Student Input

Because students will be the consumers of the media campaigns you develop, it is important to get their input throughout the entire development process.

Use peer educators, student groups, or academic classes to brainstorm and categorize important issues about sexual assault. This was a successful technique used by Butler , IUPUI and Valparaiso Universities.
Have students assist in the creation and/or evaluation of proposed tag lines and catch phrases. DePauw University used this method.
Incorporate students from your campus into the design like Purdue did.
Collaborate with graphic arts students to design the poster's layout. Consider making it into a contest like Vincennes University.

Tip 3: Evaluate Along the Way

It is important to get student feedback at several steps during the development process.

Once slogans have been identified and designs are chosen, test the posters on students who were not involved in the development phase.

How do these students react to the slogans?
What do they like/dislike about them?
What do they think about the wording of the slogans?
What message do they take away from the slogan?

Once posters have been circulated, assess the general impact of the poster campaign by randomly surveying students to get their reactions.

Are students familiar with any of the campaign slogans?
In what locations have students seen the posters?
How have the posters made them think differently about the issue?

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