5 tips for choosing the right color for a poster

 Color is the first visual element perceived and remembered by the viewer. As such, it has today become a marketing tool of primary importance. It is even a real instrument of differentiation.

When creating a poster, the choice of colors must be carefully considered, since it influences the perceptions, cognitions and sensory receptors of the audience.

For impactful communication, here are 5 tips for choosing the right color for a poster !

1. Refer to your graphic charter to choose the color of a poster

To choose the color of a poster , the first thing to do is to refer to your company's graphic charter .

This is a reference document which precisely establishes all the criteria forming your visual identity. This charter explains how, and under what conditions, your visual elements can be used in any graphic production linked to your company (poster, flyer, brochure, website, business cards, etc.)

The graphic charter therefore contains all the rules relating to:

• The company logo;
• To typography;
• To the chromatic palette;
• To the different graphic elements and icons.

In addition, the charter helps explain the creative choices linked to each of these elements, and it includes visual documentation and templates that allow you to apply your identity consistently across all of your media, including your posters.

Thus, by referring to your graphic charter, you ensure that all your documents remain perfectly faithful to the graphic principles of your brand, which is the guarantee of visually harmonious and coherent communication.

2. Limit the number of colors in your poster

To avoid creating confusion and ensure a harmonious poster, it is generally recommended to limit the number of colors.

So, start by choosing the three main colors of your poster. Use the 60-30-10 rule here:

• 60% for the dominant color;
• 30% for secondary color;
• 10% for accent color.

In detail, choose a dominant color for your poster, which occupies more than half of its surface. This main color allows you to highlight your brand identity on the poster.

The so-called secondary color occupies around 30% of the space in your communication document. Use it mainly to highlight your “ Call To Action ”, that is to say information intended to push the reader to act. We think, for example, of the date and location of an event, the telephone number, the email address, or even the website, social networks, etc.

The third color therefore occupies the remaining space on the poster. It is called an accent color, since it allows you to accentuate the effect of the other two colors by touch.

It is also possible to add two other colors to the set, but these must be chosen from soft shades of the dominant color. It can also be a neutral shade (brown, beige, black, white or gray).

3. Use the color wheel to choose the color of a poster

We are now getting to the heart of the matter! To choose the color of a poster , use the color wheel. This is an essential reference tool for all designers and artists. Very practical, it helps you select three harmonious colors, that is to say which work perfectly with each other (and without fault of taste).

In practice, it is an ordered representation of colors, here arranged in a circle following the order of the colors of the light spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet). Presented in a rational way, it is easy to distinguish primary colors from secondary and tertiary colors.

Thus, by composing your color combinations using the color wheel, you ensure a wise choice that will highlight the message of your poster.

Various colorimetric combinations are thus possible:

1. The monochrome combination

Choose a dominant color here, for example blue, and choose your two other shades from the shades of this blue.

You will thus obtain a monochrome palette, composed of a gradient of the same color.

2. The analogous combination

Here choose three colors installed next to each other on the color wheel. This combination of colors gives depth to a poster.

3. The complementary combination

This combination combines two colors placed on the exact opposite sides of the color wheel.

The third color is then chosen from the neutral shades mentioned previously. This type of colorimetric combination offers a very contrasting effect on the poster.

4. The adjacent complementary combination

Choose a main color on the circle, locate its opposite and choose the two shades placed around this opposition color.

5. The triadic combination

Here select three colors placed on the circle at equal distance from each other. If we connect them, we then form a more or less isosceles triangle.

6. The tetradic combination

The tetradic palette consists of four colors evenly spaced on the color wheel.

This is a particularly daring color combination that requires a certain amount of control to avoid going overboard.

4. Play with the color temperature of the poster to accentuate its atmosphere

To choose the right color for a poster , it is also necessary to take into account the concept of color temperature on the color wheel.

Indeed, we distinguish warm colors from cold colors. Concretely, cold colors (greens, blues and purple-blue) are placed on one side of the wheel, while warm colors (reds, oranges and yellows) are on their opposite.

Understand that this color temperature has a real impact on the emotions that your poster will produce in your audience.

Thus, cold colors, which we say “fleeting”, are associated with freshness in the human mind, but they also evoke relaxation and appeasement.

The exact opposite, so-called warm colors seem to physically give off heat. In particular, they help to draw the eye to the poster, and refer to dynamism, joy and enthusiasm.

5. Master the meaning of your poster colors

Last advice, and not the least, choosing the color of a poster must be done taking into account the respective meaning of each shade, but also the meaning of their combination.

Indeed, it is essential to understand the associations that the human brain makes based on the colors used and their combinations. An understanding that will help you reach your audience more easily with your poster. A communicator who masters this aspect is even capable of influencing the reader's emotions and reactions. As such, the use of colors according to their meaning is a real marketing strategy.

Our perception of colors is directly linked to the psychological, biological and cultural. For example: if our eyes are more easily attracted to bright colors, it is because we are biologically programmed to react to shades associated with elements of danger, such as poisonous plants and animals, which are often adorned with these colors.

It is also important to understand that the combination of several colors can result in a very different perception than that which a single color would have produced. Thus, two colors can reinforce each other, or on the contrary create a contrast, or even compete with each other. It is therefore important to think carefully about the effect you want to produce through your color palette, in order to choose your colors accordingly.

To help you, here is a (non-exhaustive) list of the individual meaning of colors:

• Red is a warm color evocative of passion and love, but also of danger and violence;
• Orange is also a warm color, less aggressive than red, and which evokes positive feelings, vitality and sharing;
• The color yellow is a solar hue, which brings us back to feelings of cheerfulness and joy of life, but which is also paradoxically linked to prudence and deception;
• Green is none other than the color that we directly associate with nature, and by extension with growth, wealth and positivity;
• Blue is a cool color that evokes confidence (especially dark blue), calm and evolution;
• Pink is a color evocative of softness and romanticism, but which we also associate with boldness;
• The color purple is a shade that we associate with spirituality, but also with prestige;
• White is evocative of purity and minimalism, but it also refers us to a notion of prestige;
• Black is evocative of death, mourning and pain, but it is also associated with luxury.

Our tip for choosing the right color for a poster

To choose the color of a poster , you need: