Poster printing is as much an art as it is a science as well. Print posters can be considered as art, individual, creative and free, but they are also bound by theories of beauty, aesthetics, proportion and other concepts that are science-like. So it comes as to no surprise that there are a couple of basic formulas on the layout design when it comes to poster printing. Human psychology and perception play a big role in defining these common layouts making them attractive, easy to understand and effective in advertising.

Below are a few of the common layouts that you can consider adhering to when creating your color poster design. Using these layouts should help your design become as attractive and as effective as possible when dealing with a human audience.

The Wanted Poster – Some Poster artists may not be aware of it, but most poster designs gravitate to a "wanted poster" layout or a similar variation of it. The "wanted poster" layout basically has the main poster title or header on top, the main design object in the middle and then the other details of the poster at the bottom. If you can imagine an old western style wanted poster, you should have a pretty good idea of what the layout should look like.

This layout is one of the most common and best layouts for poster printing because it is the easiest to notice and it is also the easiest to read. The big header text immediately draws our attention to it (i.e. WANTED!). Then, most of us have the tendency to look downwards, just like you are ascertaining a person. Looking down from the header, we see the main poster image which will attract us further. This causes us to look for supporting text typically by looking downwards more. Once we read the text and other details, the poster’s work is done. As you can see, all the relevant information is given to the viewer in a step by step process making the color poster easier to understand. This makes the wanted poster layout the ideal layout for most poster printing occasions.

The Streamer Poster – A streamer layout for a poster basically involves stacking up all the poster details in one central column. This includes the main header or title, and all the supporting details. Typically the main object is relegated to the background or it is placed at the bottom of the stream. Again this follows the human tendency to look from up to down as we look at something. The difference here is that the layout relies on the text details itself to keep a person’s attention.

The Framing poster – As the layout’s name suggest, the framing poster has a "framed" layout. This can be done by actual frames on some or on all four sides of the poster. However, the frame can also be a person, tree or other object which frames the poster artistically. Framed posters will center people’s attentions on the center of the design. If you have a great centerpiece in your design, then this layout may be a good choice.

The Column/row Poster – The column and row poster layout is typically used in informative posters, such as scientific research posters, or awareness posters. Their layout basically involves content that are organized into rows or columns. This caters to our tendency to read text in books or newspapers. Basically we read these types of printed material either left to right by rows or top to bottom by columns. If you are creating an informative poster, this layout is the most efficient to display your data so that people can read them well.

As you can see, with just the top 4 common layouts for posters, you can already manage to create a lot of types and designs. Of course these are just major guidelines in a layout, and you can make a few changes to them to make your poster more unique, or you can completely throw them out the window and make a layout from scratch. However, take note of how these layouts are effective because they take into account how humans view and read posters. So learn what you can, and design the best layout for your full color poster printing.