Matte finish is most popular with short-term use temporary posters as they’re cheaper and affordable than the other two. As they reflect almost no light, they’re perfect for black & white posters.
They’re also less detailed posters that are perfect in almost any lighting situation. Matte posters also beneficial for keeping your poster clean from dust and smudges. Premium matte posters are also available at most poster print shops.
Advantages of Matte finish:
Almost all matte printing are on the budget side as it’s an affordable uncoated paper with rich and deep colours that you would expect from a coated paper. Matte coating is typically popular on 170gsm paper because they’re the cheapest option when it comes to poster printing.
Matte is also available in higher grams per square meter but if you’re a student or on a budget we recommend matte coated posters on 170gsm. The readability on a matte paper is superb as there is no shine to interrupt.
They’re perfect for outdoor use in harsh sunlight, giving you no reflection. Matte is also environmentally friendly as its FCC certified highly recyclable material.
Key advantages of Matte finish:
- Non-reflective material
- Cheap & affordable
- Uncoated, rich & deep colours
- Highly recyclable material
POSTS TO HELP YOU DESIGN
Guides & TutorialsDon’t have a design for you poster yet? Here is a design Guide
Technology has become a long way and it has become easy for anyone without a design skill to design a unique design of poster for their business or personal use.
Software like Adobe Spark offers free and premium poster templates that you can customise to your need. Printers like Reload Internet offers on-sight designers who can design your poster for you.
Based on your need they can quote you the labour price based on your needs.
Tips for designing your poster:
The key to designing a gorgeous poster is to keep it simple. As human we tend to overlook things when there are too much information presented, after all we only remember 5% of anything that we learn thought the day.
Too much text on a poster can be off-putting to a viewer and most readers prefer information at a bite-size that they can digest easily. Make the relevant information bold and clear.
For example; start time of an event, dates, address, price and names. Try and use vibrant colours to make your poster standout in a crowd. If you have any text on your poster, make sure to use the opposite colour to your background on your text so it doesn’t blend in.
Finally, use a clean font so viewers have no difficulty reading your text. Do not use funky fonts like comic sans unless it suits your theme.
Struggling to design your poster?
Do you have an idea that you want to bring to life with your poster but you do not have the patience or resources to design them? Not a problem!
Almost all the printers across have professional on sight designers who can design your poster for you with fraction of the design cost that you would pay for a freelance to design your poster for you.
Simply explain your vision to the designer and they will quote you the price for designing and printing your poster based on the time it takes to designing and printing your poster.
You can submit any asset you have to them such as logo of the company, images of the product or any type of imager that you would like to feature on your poster. Don’t worry; they will always make sure that you’re happy with the design of your poster before printing them.
Do you want to design it yourself?
Software like Adobe Spark is designed just for that purpose.
With a paid subscription you can choose from thousands of poster templates on their website and customize it according to your liking. The tools are easy to operation so you don’t need to be a pro to operate it.
Once you’re done, simply export them and email it to your local print shop to be printed.
If you have the design skills to create it from scratch, we recommend Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator which can be purchased with monthly or yearly subscription.
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Guides & TutorialsWhat is the best Poster Design Software?
The industry is flooded with Poster Design Softwares but we’re only going to recommend the most commonly used by designers across the poster designing industry.
Sure you can go online find templates and customise it to your liking but what’s the fun in it? In fact we’re only going to recommend Adobe software’s because we know that they work well.
Adobe Photoshop:
The most famous poster design softwares out of all of them is Adobe Photoshop. Developed and published by Adobe in the 90’s, Photoshop is a raster graphics editor. The software has become industry standard for raster graphics and digital art as a whole.
You can edit and compose your poster in multiple layers using mask support, alpha compositing and several colour modes like RGB and CMYK. You must always use CMYK colour mode when you’re creating anything for the purpose of printing.
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black which compose of the main 4 colours. RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) is purely used for screen based graphics.
Although CMYK are the main colours, modern poster printing machines use 8-ink system for extra depth and vibrant colours.
Adobe Photoshop uses PSD and PSB file formats to support these features but users can export their graphics in number of different file formats like JPEG, PNG, TIFF and more.
We recommend sending the original PSD file format for printing shops so that they can export it according to what supports their machines. PSD is also useful if you require modification to your graphics after you’ve sent it to your print shop.
You must always use at least 600 dpi (dots per inch) when designing your poster regardless of the chosen software.
For the highest quality you can set your resolution to 1440 Dpi.
Remember to always save your files time to time so you can retrieve it even if the software or machine crashes.
You must also remember to set desired poster size before start doing anything on Photoshop as your graphics can result in loss of quality if you need to enlarge it later on.
Adobe Illustrator:
Illustrator is a vector based graphics editor which is often used for drawing illustrations.
Unlike bitmap images that Photoshop uses, Illustrator uses mathematical equations to draw out the shapes.
Setting your preferred size is not necessary as it can be scaled up later on. We recommend you set your size because it can help to know exactly how much space you’ve got to work it.
As they’re in the same family, Adobe Illustrator files can be opened on Adobe Photoshop if required. Although the colour mode can be changed on illustrator, it is advisable to always work on CMYK. This is because RGB colours won’t support CMYK which can result in completely different colour when printing.
Adobe Indesign:
Also part of good poster design softwares, Indesign is made for designing Posters, Magazines, flyers, brochures and newspapers, InDesign features tools that are especially useful for creating content for publishing.
InDesign is also a vector based program but unlike Illustrator InDesign has the ability to handle multiple pages and master pages so you can easily create magazine layout or books.
With the feature like automatic page numbering, all pages are linked to an editable master page. Designers in the industry usually use InDesign to bring together all their artwork from Photoshop and Illustrator.
Ultimately you must use all three software as a designer but for poster printing either one of them will do.
The use of Microsoft PowerPoint to create your posters:
Microsoft’s PowerPoint is most commonly used to create presentation slides so we do not recommend it.
Large format printing require the graphic to be high definition and at least 600Dpi (dots per inch) in resolution. However; PowerPoint can only export in 72Dip and is not suitable for large format printing. Our recommended software for designing your graphic for large format printing is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator.
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Do you need tips and tricks to design your poster? Click here [...]
Guides & TutorialsChoosing content for your poster:
What content you want to include in your poster is purely based on the purpose of your poster but here are some useful tips & tricks on images, fonts and few other useful information.
Choosing Images:
Whatever the purpose of your poster is, do not clutter it with unwanted information and images, Keep it simple. If you’re going to use an image we recommend using your own image of the product or event that you’re promoting so you don’t run into copyright problems later on. Believe it or not, more than 80% of the images on the internet are copyrighted by their respectable owner so they have the right to sue anyone for thousands if not millions of pounds in damage if used without their permission.
If you are going to use images from the internet, you must clearly read the copyright information of that image. Some website might allow you to use the images on their website for free but you must ask written permission from the owner.
Make sure to use high-quality images. Most images on the internet are low on quality as they’re quicker to load when opening a webpage so you must make sure the image of your linking is not compressed for web use, this can ruin all your hard work and the whole poster when printing it.
The way to know if the image size doesn’t meet the requirement for your poster is to download and import it on to your Photoshop or Illustrator file. If the image is larger than you need it to be after you import it, it’s suitable, if you need to scale it up then it’s not suitable for your poster.
Fonts:
The use of a font can make or break a good looking poster. The internet is flooded with weird, unique and funky fonts so you must carefully choose fonts that suit the style of your poster. We recommend bold and professional fonts like Arial, Calibri and Cambria for clean look but you can also find thousands of clean, professional fonts to download on the internet. Some are premium so you might have to pay to download.
Make sure to only add the relevant information so you don’t overload your viewer with unwanted information. Use bold font for information such as; time and date of the event, price of the ticket or product and address of the venue that the event is taking place at. Avoid using cartoonish fonts unless it suits the theme of your content.
Colour:
The use of colour on your is completely subject to the content of it but always aim to create your graphic contrast and vibrant so it attracts potential customers and passers-by. Avoid blank & white posters unless it is your theme to make it black & white. Black & White poster are most common among photographers but not advisable for marketing and promotional purposes. Make sure to set the font colours opposite to the background so it doesn’t blend in with it.
Did you enjoy reading our useful tips & tricks article? Check out another here.
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Guides & TutorialsMost Frequent Questions and Answers:
Do custom printed poster fit into any standard frames?
You must not purchase frames that are too small for your poster but any frames larger than your poster must fit without a problem. If your poster is too small for the frame, use white or black paper behind your poster to create a nice and elegant border around it.
How are custom posters printed?
Modern machinery allows any custom sizes to be printed as long as they’re within the largest size the machine is capable of printing. The results of the modern printers are crisp and vibrant.
What is a blue back paper?
Blue back papers are generally white on the front with a blue colour coating at the back to prevent light from shining through it. This is usually helpful if you’re planning to stick your poster on a shop front window or on top of another existing poster or graffiti. It also adds durability to your poster, especially for outdoor uses. This is why billboards typically use blue back paper.
What are poster rails and are they useful?
Poster rails are a lightweight and portable display option that looks sleek and profession for any occasion. They’re especially designed accessory for vertically designed posters to be hung on. Poster rails usually comes with two long tabs of plastic or aluminium so you can slide each tab onto bottom or top of your custom poster. The tabs usually have pre-drilled holes that you can hang your hang your poster onto using string, hooks, rope of suction cups. They’re of course very useful as they’re extremely lightweight thanks to the material that they’re made of and potable so you can set it up anywhere depending on your need.
What is Polypropylene?
Polypropylene or SyntiSOL is a plastic paper with satin coating that is perfect for use in outdoor as it’s extremely weather-proof and durable. It provides excellent print quality but we recommend this material for poster printing to be viewed from close range as point-of-sale display and entrance poster. If used correctly, this material is guaranteed to stand the test of time.
What is the best-selling poster size?
The best-selling poster size for students and businesses is A2 which is precisely trimmed to 594mm x 420mm. It can be comfortably viewed from a distance and it’s affordable enough for short-term uses. The A2 poster print is a great way to advertise your event or promotion. To make it even more affordable, most printers offer bulk discount on many of their A2 poster printing options like Matte, Satin or Gloss finish.
Your A2 poster can be printed on a very high 1440 dpi printer using your choice of material and finishing options. You can also choose to laminate your poster on matte, gloss or dry-wipe finish for extra durability. Poster printers across London use genuine 8-ink HP or Epson ink which feature high-contrast, vibrant look to your A2 poster so you can be sure to get the best quality and value for your money.
Want a more premium and durable poster? Why not upgrade the thickness of the printing paper from the standard 170gsm to 280gsm or even 400gsm. See printing material for more information
What is a larger poster?
Small shops and businesses have no use for large posters, however; there are two other larger poster sizes. The first poster size is approximately 69cm by 102cm which is a sheet-based printing that is typically used for advertising movies in cinema. The second large poster size is 102cm by 152cm which is also a sheet-based poster that’s usually used for advertising on bus stops and malls.
What is offset printing?
Offset printing is by far the most widely used method, although there are several other known processes for poster printing. Offset lithography is a technique that involves the use of plates. These plates represent each plate that is used in printing a poster. Some standard poster printers use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) colours while other printers use two colour processes. Offset lithography may require the use of special colours in addition to the CMYK colours in some cases.
What is the easiest way to print a poster?
The easiest way to print your artwork is to email it to the print shops. Alternatively you can also take your artwork on a memory stick to their store. Alongside cash and card payments, most businesses also accept PayPal as a mode of payment nowadays. Printers usually process your order as soon payment is made which means you can collect your order on the same day if ordered before a certain time of the day or next day morning collection is also available. Most businesses can also deliver your poster order next day nationwide. [...]