This poster caught my eye on my commute to school on Bart. This exemplifies good layout design because of the use of attractive colors, the serif font, the use of spacing, and the change in size of the font to draw attention to the important points on the poster.

This poster was on a bulleting board on campus and seems like a really bad layout. The thing that caught my eye is the use of while letters on a black background in certain sections. This makes the letters hard to see, especially because the font is in cursive and very thin. The main point of emphasis on this poster is the graphic, and not the text.

The funding announcement poster is an example of successful layout and the proposed development poster is an example of unsuccessful layout. The main difference between the two examples is their use of space. The former is simple, balanced, and uncluttered. It provides the basic information and utilizes caps and bolding to highlight important components. And lastly the text is centered and its use of simple colors seem friendly and inviting. On the other hand, the latter seems very cluttered and unbalanced. The bottom half of the poster is empty, while the top half is crammed with information. Also the text is moves from occupying the entire width to occupying only half of the width - without an apparent reason. It’s printed in black and white, uses bolding and caps only for its headings, and provides no visuals of the proposed construction.

Bad layout:

I thought it would be appropriate to show a different poster with the same band as it creates a completely different set of emotional responses from the previous one. The layout for this is just plain ugly and lacks any cohesive direction. The font for it is very neutral and does not create any sense of what the event is all about. The random musical note symbols are also redundant and quite puzzling.

Good Layout

The message is simple and effective, probably moreso that there is a large image of what is to be done, versus the words “Dishes.” Also, the sign is very appropriately located above the sink in the studio.

Bad Layout

I just think this sign is boring, too much white space, and it’s hard to distinguish what is the most important text to read, when “In 315 Studios” is at the center of the page.

The second flyer makes certain rather poor design choices. My biggest problems with it are as follows: The use of 15 different fonts on a single page, and that nothing in the layout ties the piece together. The layout is essentially a set of modular horizontal stripes, which resembles more a set of news stories on a page (which we have learned to read as different items). This is in part because of the riot of fonts does not provide consistency, but also because of layout choices such as the box around the bands playing and the trapped white space between the blocks of information text. To its credit, however, the name of the party and the accompanying picture placed prominently in the top left, get the idea across quickly.

http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~baueran/bad.jpg

I like the layout of this poster, which is my example for a successful design. I they’ve done a good job in terms of coloring, choice of fonts an the trendy gradient.

http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~baueran/good.jpg

The ridiculousness of the subject matter aside, this layout has a number of problems. The worst, I think, is the uneven centering. Centering everything is a pretty straightforward, if boring, way of laying out a page; but the title isn’t properly centered at all, with “Owen Baker Flynn” pushed over to the left. This prominent, seemingly unintentional off-center element throws the whole thing off-kilter, making an already ugly design even worse.

My “successful” example comes from my wall calendar, which features old train posters:

I really like this layout. The clock tower is nicely balanced by the black train, whose angle conveys power and speed. The initial “O” in the text aligns with the clock tower, echoing the shape of the clock, and the left edge of the block of text below it continues the vertical line downward. Although the text block is relatively complex, with several different font sizes and lines protruding to either side, it feels balanced in the composition, partly because of that strong vertical line through the O, and partly because the way the text extends down to the right acts as a counterpoint to the train extending upward above it. The composition as a whole is heavily weighted toward the bottom of the layout, making it feel grounded and drawing the eye toward the text, which is further made to stand out by darkening the background to black and setting the text in white.

Sorry the picture is not focused very well, but I really like the layout, because it is simple but powerful.
This purpose of this poster is to celebrate San Francisco Ballet’s 75th anniversary. The color choice is plain with black for background, white for important information, and yellow for less important texts. The different font types, capital letters, kerning spacing and bold also distinguishes the importance of these texts.
For the composition, the dancing font, “ballet” in the bottom left and “75” on the top right corner, plus the image in the middle create a dynamic “X” shape on the poster.

Bad Example:

I took this picture in front of engineering library as a bad example of poster/flyer layout. Although the designer tried to be creative by using the book metaphor, there is no big distinction between important or unimportant information. Also the book titles on the spin are simply unreadable.

There are more posters/ flyers I found recently.
http://picasaweb.google.com/millie.cheng/PosterAndFlyer

http://shiwenhua.info/__oneclick_uploads/2008/03/4a.jpg

this is a better flyer. BUY BYE is catching the eye. it’s very easy to read a loud. the red color and spaces on top gave more directions to center column BUY BYE.

This image was an advertisement in the BART station. Although the picture is a bit dark, you can see that the layout is simply too cluttered. The images are layered on top of each other in a somewhat haphazard way.

Good Layout:

I like the way this poster is laid out. It’s simple but effective. The necessary text is on the poster, but doesn’t overwhelm the design.