So today i was doing the poster for next weeks mr elephant bi monthly residency at the Bulls Head. I had the template from Matt Tilley from our celebrate brums underground gig, so aside from deciding on a suitable name i figured it’d be a quick half hour edit and then down to the stationers before blasting the locality.

Unfortunately it took me around 4 hours! And my ink has run out, which leaves me with halg a poster!  Nevertheless it was a reminder to allow much time for such things (backed up by graphic guru Aart Tanner). Aart (and the design session) have taught me a few things about photoshop, so i thought i’d them pass on to anyone wanting to design a poster in photoshop, though remember i’m not a proper designer.

1. First off get your image size right in the image/image size menu, or at least your dimensions. A3 is best poster size.

2. Get your details sorted and on a bit of paper, so you’re just doing the graphics when making your poster. I never seem to listen to this piece of advice, and it adds hours onto the job. For a basic poster you need the name/brand of your night, (and title if appropriate), the date an the venue, artists, times, prices, and the website or extra info at the bottom. The name, date and venue need to be the biggest, the artists the next, followed by the time and prices, then website/extra info, in my opinion at least. The main details and your main selling point should be most visible.

3. When you’ve typed your details in (Impact and Stencil fonts are commonly used), create layer folders, by cliicking the arrow on the top right of layers box, and  create layer sets. Now drag your corresponding layers into the corresponding set, (e.g header, line up , etc) and  you can now move around all that text by selecting the layer. This was Aarts top tip which i’ve wanted to know for ages now!

4 Just use black and white, and dont bother with fancy graphics. I’ve had many posters designed with beautiful graphics but at the end of the day, you want the info to get to as many peoples eyes as poss.

5. I’m no designer, but i have done a load of flyers posters and cd covers, and the main thing it seems is to get the lines and sizing right. It seems to make huge differences when you move something marginally one way or the other, or slightly bigger or smaller, so make sure you zoom in and out (pretending your seeing from far away, and up close) and make your decisions.

6. Last but not least give yourself about 3/4 hours to get it done well. The time i’ve taken on this one means the poster is now more informative (sometimes you just got to add the ideas as you are working), and the design works a lot better.

And there’s still time to poster, so i’ll sign off, and hope this has proved useful