How to Choose Poster Fonts?

Yesterday I was browsing the web for inspiration to find a generic poster font. I couldn’t find a specific set of guiding principles to help pick fonts for lets say concert poster. So I browsed through my fonts and I used a series of guidelines to choose one. Here is my list.

Must be Readable: The call to action is more important than how cool the font looks; if your font looks artsy but makes your message unreadable, don’t use it. This doesn’t mean you can’t use creative fonts; if it’s readable at larger sizes, use it.

Must be Balanced: Posters are typically 60-70% graphics and about 30% text. If your fonts are your graphics, balance their big sizes with smaller body text. Differentiate headlines from body text with size. That way, viewers will easily spot the most important information on the poster.

Must have Contrast: Play with more ways to contrast your headlines from the body text. Use different font colors, types and weight. Try using a sans serif font for the headline, and then serif font for the body text. Just keep the font colors contrasting nicely with the background color.

Must limit Fonts: Keep the font variety to two at most. I typically just use one font and use weight and size and color to differentiate levels of text. The general rule of thumb is two fonts one for headlines and one for body text.  Too many fonts make posters look messy and cluttered. If you need to organize info on your posters, use bold or italic types. Even custom poster prints have only so much space for you to fill up.

My poster ended up looking like this (2mb PDF).