Designing posters for a theatrical production
Don Nguyen - Written for PerformanceOmaha.com

If you ever need to design a poster for a theatrical production, the following are some tips on how to go about doing this

Find a Motif
You should always try to find a strong thematic element for your poster. First, familiarize yourself with the show, either by reading the script or a synopsis of it, or talking to the director of the production. Motifs will provide a strong foundation for your poster concept. For a Valentine's show, you may want to use a heart or cupid as your motif. If you were designing a poster for Harvey one of the obvious motifs would be rabbit ears. The poster for Ping Pong Diplomacy is a good example of using motif. The major elements of this play were table tennis and the peace sign. I used the shape of a "ping pong" paddle as the major visual element of the poster. I used the peace sign to segment the paddle into three sections. Within these three sections, I put a photo of the three main characters.

For Sunday In The Park With George, I used the famous Seurat painting, as well as a paint brush for the motifs.

Use strong images that grab attention
Strong images that make an impact is what you are going for. Remember that you are fighting for attention when your poster is put up on a busy student union bulletin board or next to a dozen other posters in a record shop. Make a statement with your poster image, so that you quickly grab the attention of passers-by. For Love Is Strange, a play about domestic violence, I wanted to go for a menacing image as well have an element of mystery. I decided to show only half of the face of the abusive husband and combine that with a profile shot of a woman with a bruise on her cheek in the foreground. This poster didn't need any copy. The images spoke for themselves.

I also made a second version of the Love Is Strange poster. For it, I used another profile shot of the woman, and the image of her reflection in the mirror where you can see her bruise. I then put a partially opaque layer of text that reads, "Domestic abuse is a silent crime." So, what's wrong with this poster? The color and saturation never worked for me. I liked the composition of the piece, but it never grabbed my attention the way the first one did.

Use good copy
I consider writing good copy an art form. Copy is the text of the ad; the sales pitch, so to speak.
Advertisements rely on copy to convey a company's message. Copy also becomes an important tool when you are trying to publicize a new play that no one has ever heard of. Look at movie posters. They usually have copy on them that consists of a sentence or two that tells the viewer what the movie is about, hopefully exciting them into seeing it. The same goes for posters for new plays. For Three To Beam Up, I used the following copy: "A captain in danger of losing his command ... A family in danger of losing their father .... A father in danger of losing his mind ... How far would you go to find the truth?" Because the play was about family relationships and Star Trek, I used three images (father, son and daughter) and a Star Trek font that was implemented for the copy.
(The Star Trek font is a motif in itself. Almost anyone can identify this type of font with the sci-fi show, so therefore, it was a natural choice to use on the poster)

For Corpus Christi, which is the retelling of the Christ story from the point of view of a gay man named Joshua, I created the slogan, "The greatest story ever retold," playing off of the popular phrase and movie title about the Bible, "The greatest story ever told." I combined this with the strong image of a man on a cross. This proved to be a very successful poster for SNAP! Productions, and I regard it as one of my personal favorites, especially since I barely did any retouching of this image.

Define your color scheme
Choose a certain color combination that is suitable for conveying the mood of your production. Be careful not to use too many colors, as this may convolute your poster. If you can, choose combinations that contrast each other without clashing. For example, red-black-white is a great color combination, because of the high contrast each has to the other.
Spooge uses this red-black-white combination:

Three To Beam Up uses a black background with variations of purple:

Make it Personal
We always connect with another human face. If you want your poster to connect with an audience, put a face or two on it. Most of my posters have faces on them, because theatre is about people. There is a personal connection that occurs between the actors on stage and the audience. Your posters, too, can have a personal connection.
Be creative with human faces. I find faces most interesting when you crop them. Some good examples are for Cyber, a play about a man and a woman in an online chat room. Notice how mysterious the woman is. Also notice that the 1's and 0's, which represent binary code, are a motif for computers.

For the poster of The Marriage Of Bette And Boo I used a lot of faces. This is a technique I sometimes use to introduce the entire cast in the poster. Because it was so much of an ensemble piece, I wanted to convey that with snapshots of each character. Notice how each snap shot tells you a little about that character. Bette and Boo is a dark comedy about people. The main characters are on either side of the poster, partially obscured, with their families in between them. This poster is also a good example of a well-defined color scheme. Black and white for the photos (just like real artsy wedding pictures) and two distinct colors that gives a splash of fun and whimsy to the poster.

Tools
There are several tools you can use to create and layout a poster. For beginners, try Microsoft Publisher. It contains a lot of clip art and pre-designed templates. For advanced designers, you can use Pagemaker, Adobe Illustrator (for making vector drawings and line art), Adobe Photoshop, etc.

Two words on Photoshop .... Learn it! Photoshop will open a wide realm of creativity. I've used Photoshop to enhance poorly taken pictures, added in new backgrounds for press photos, and dramatically enhanced poster images. Probably all of my posters have been manipulated by Photoshop in one way or another. Here are a couple of examples of how pictures can be manipulated in Photoshop. This press photo for Tommy was taken against a very bland, dark brown background. I added in the pinball machine

For Ping Pong Diplomacy there was no large picture of Chairman Mao, until I Photoshopped it in.

This press photo for The Marriage Of Bette And Boo was actually three separate shots; one of each actor against a white wall. I combined the two images and added a stained glass background.

I hope you've found these tips useful. Please remember that these are just tips that I have picked up and learned over the years through trial and error. The more you work on poster design, or design in general, the better you will become. So use your knowledge, your creativity, and above all, your instincts.