Three poster-scale type compositions built for this portfolio. The rules are the same as the ones that guide gig-poster designers, festival identities, and independent-film title cards. One idea per poster, held at a size that makes people look up from a phone.
Poster 01 · Type as architecture
Two colors, one type family, four lines of copy stacked flush left at optical size 120. The gold verbs pull the eye down the page the way step-and-repeat headline posters have done since Push Pin Studios. Nothing on this poster is decoration; every element sits on a baseline grid at 60px increments.
Poster 02 · Display serif on cream
Two weights of the same display serif, one roman and one italic. The italic is doing something the roman cannot: it is softening the second word so the phrase feels like an invitation instead of a command. The rest of the poster is quiet on purpose. Cream paper, a hairline rule, a small caps kicker in gold, and a monospaced footer that reads like a printed ticket.
Poster 03 · Wrapped word
Repetition as composition. Three “PREP” blocks stack the concept of practice into the poster; the fourth line breaks the pattern with the noun and a color shift. The gold does the same job an emphasized syllable does in speech. The italic serif tag under the block softens what would otherwise feel like a chant. The mono lockup at the bottom keeps the piece from tipping into pure display and reminds the viewer it is a product.
How I work a poster
I start with the phrase, not the layout. Every poster on this page began as one line spoken out loud. If the phrase does not survive a single read at conversational speed, no amount of type craft rescues it. The type work only starts once the words are clean.
Then I pick the family. One family, occasionally two. Two type families is a design decision that has to earn itself; a poster with three families almost always looks like a group project. After the family, I set a grid (60px increments here) and stack the words as objects, not as text. The eye reads a poster the way it reads a signal: shape first, weight second, size third, word last. If the shape does not work upside down or across the room, the poster is not done.
Scale and viewing distance
Every poster on this page is drawn for a specific viewing distance. Poster 01 is the transit-poster brief: eye-height, three meters away, four seconds of dwell. That is why the headline sits at 120pt and the rest of the layout is quiet. Poster 02 is the venue-poster brief: window scale, one meter away, twenty seconds of dwell. That length of dwell earns the italic serif and the ticket-style monospaced footer. Poster 03 is the trade-poster brief: three meters, thirty seconds, and the eye is likely to be moving. The repetition earns its keep because a moving eye reads pattern faster than it reads sentence.
The rule I keep coming back to is that a poster is a piece of type, not a piece of graphic design. The type does the whole job. Adding a photograph or an illustration to a poster like these would be admitting the type was not strong enough on its own. If that admission is true, redraw the type.
Print production notes
- All three posters are set up as 18×24 (Poster 01 and 03) and 24×36 (Poster 02) with a 12mm bleed and 8mm safe area.
- Color budget is two spot colors for Poster 01 (Pantone Black + Pantone 872 Gold Metallic) and full-process CMYK on cream stock for Poster 02.
- Poster 03 is printed screen instead of offset because the flat gold reads richer under a screened application than under a four-color build. This is a paper-and-ink decision, not a design decision.
- Every SVG on this page carries the master typography exactly as it would print. What you see in the browser is the mark that goes to the printer.
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