In the Club
Create a club poster using templates
Creating a large-format poster for a club event might seem daunting. First you have to create an eye-catching design, then you have to get it printed at a size that’s beyond the ability of most home printers. Here, we show you how to overcome these challenges.
Choose a template
Because most of us aren’t graphics professionals, the most sensible course of action when creating your own poster is to use online templates. One option is Canva ( www.snipca.com/35152), but as we recommended it for creating a club logo (see Issue 569, page 48) you may have already used up its 30-day free trial. Instead, we’ll show you how to use Adobe Spark, which is free.
Go to www.snipca.com/35154, then click the blue ‘Create a Poster Now’ button. You’ll be asked to log in at this point. If you don’t already have an Adobe account, you can register for free or link it to an existing account, such as your Google or Facebook account. In the next screen you’ll be prompted to select a size for your poster. Click the Print category, then select from the options. We’re looking to print a large poster, so have selected the 11x17in Poster option.
Spark will now offer to produce a poster based on a wide choice of free, high-resolution images. However, we want to create something a little more unique, so we’ll click Skip, then use the search box (top right) to find a suitable template. For our book club’s poster, we simply searched for books. Avoid any templates that have a yellow shield in the top-right corner - these are premium templates and require a paid-for Adobe Spark account (starting at just over £10 per month). There are plenty of free templates, so choose one of those instead.
Design your poster
You can now edit any element on the template you chose, as well as add new elements such as text, photos and icons – click the Add button (top right) to select these. Further down the right-hand side of the page you’ll see options for adjusting colours and resizing your poster. Whenever you add a new element, you can decide to put it in front of or behind existing elements (similar to using layers in image editors). In our example, we’ve tweaked things so that the text sits behind the main image. Simply select the element you want to push back or bring forward, then drag the Order slider (see screenshot above).
Once you’ve finished editing your poster, click the Download button (top right). From the list of options, select PDF (see screenshot below). PDF files guarantee the highest quality, and despite it being a beta feature we didn’t have any problems with it. Click ‘Start download’ and your poster will be saved to your Downloads folder.
Print your poster at home
You’ll always get the best results by printing with professional services. For example, Vistaprint ( www.vistaprint.co. uk) charges just over £10 for a single A3 poster, including delivery.
However, if you want to save money, you can do the printing yourself. To do this, we’re using Adobe Reader, which you can download free from www.snipca. com/35155 (avoid the Acrobat Pro Trial and instead click ‘Download Adobe Reader’).
Open your poster PDF in Adobe Reader and click File, then Print. In the Print window that opens, locate the ‘Page Sizing & Handling’ section, then click Poster. You can now choose which size you want. Printing our poster at 100 per cent would require it to be printed over three sheets of paper. However, by reducing the size to 90 per cent, it just about fits on two pages. If you want a larger poster, you can increase the size beyond 100 per cent, but the image will probably be pixelated.
By default, there will be no overlaps on each printed page, so you’ll need to carefully place the pages together when displaying it. For a neater finish, add a small overlap (we’ve opted for half an inch here – see screenshot below), which makes arranging the pages easier when you come to put the poster up. When you’re ready, click Print and wait for your multi-page poster to materialise.