Tools For Development

I wish to create a poster. What are the best tools that I can utilise to create an engaging poster?
The intended audience is younger people, and it is related to an arts fest

Your brain, a piece of paper, and a pencil 
 because without a good idea, you got nothing.

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I would add “eyes” too.

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In this industry you need eyes in your feet!

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Brain, pencil, eye!
Hmm, those basic tools are important, I agree. But again, it depends on how creative I am. Anyone can create an above-average poster. Rather I am looking for a stand-out one. Tools like Canva will help to build something interesting yet common in many ways. I have seen many organizations and free-lancers using this tool to create engaging content for AI services, software development and for their CSR activities promotion.
I wish to add a few more to this line. Designhill poster maker, Postermy wall, Design cap, Fotor, and Visme. Ultimate tool, like @Steve_O, has said, BRAIN!

Can they? I beg to differ. Anyone can create something their mum would like, but to create an effective solution that communicates what is required to its intended audience, takes expertise and experience. It is not just a case of ‘making pretty’.

Canva is not the way to go if you want to do anything professionally. Adobe is the Industry standard. Failing that, if budgets make it prohibitive, look at Affinity. A very good, very affordable second best.

Even then, software is not the issue, education and knowledge is.

If you have no idea what you are doing and you want an engaging poster to communicate with a specific demographic – and it sounds like you do – then I’d suggest hiring a professional. It all depends at what level this is. If it is a serious event, you have to be serious about its promotion. If it is a local, amateur event, then a local, amateur-produced poster may do the trick.

Not by the efforts people have posted here, for one.

As others have said, I disagree with this statement completely.

I think you and I are on two different pages, or posters as the case may be. Everything I do is completely bespoke. I don’t use any templates or online generators.

Comes off like you have a stake in promoting Canva.

To an extent, as professionals we all choose our tools, within production-dictated limits of “industry standard.” The purveyors of Canva may wish it to be an industry standard, but currently, it is only just breaking into amateur standard status.

Specificity aside, no software will create your “stand-out” poster.

Each of the software/platforms you mentioned is intended for amateurs. They’re not professional design tools.

You’ve probably come to the wrong place if you’re looking for do-it-yourself solutions to design problems. Most of the participants on this forum are professional designers or students pursuing a design education.

You specifically mentioned posters, but the tools most professionals use to create print materials of almost any kind are those found in Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign) and sometimes the Affinity software equivalents.

As important as good tools might be, experience, education, talent, research, and sound judgment are far more important.

Yay for Drag-and-drop template crap.
Rah rah rah.

In addition to crowdsourcing, lack of licensing requirements, and oversupply brought on by diploma mills, template-driven design is another threat to the profession.

We’ve already seen this happen with website design. Around 40% of websites use pre-existing WordPress templates where designers use the options within the templates to create whatever limited variations the templates permit. Counting the other template-driven CMS platforms that deliver more or less off-the-shelf solutions, my guess is they account for the vast majority.

I think there will be a market for higher-end graphic design (and websites) for companies that need and can afford custom, bespoke work — at least until artificial intelligence begins eating into that market in another decade or so. For everyday purposes, I suspect the ground rules have already shifted and will continue to shift in the direction of off-the-shelf and cheap crowdsourced solutions.

This trend is nothing new. I doubt anyone here has custom-tailored clothing or meals prepared by chefs in their architect-designed homes. Since technology has gotten to the point where DYI, off-the-shelf, and internet crowdsourcing permits it, I see no reason to think graphic design will be exempt from the same market forces.

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The minute the software was developed this profession was doomed. I’m not saying the software was a bad thing. But I could see it when in college for design. For a long while the class work was all cookie-cutter limited by the limitations of the software. My game was to not let the software limit my ideas. Think it first then make the software do it. I was an older student, no core courses, a TA in the design computer “lab” (all three Macs) so I had time to muck around. Our study group used to terrorize the professors by twisting their assignments. It was fun. LOL!

But it also showed me what an equalizer it was. Some of the good students dumbed down their work to fit the software while the marginal students could be just as good as the good students (assuming they had the theory down.)

When I had the opportunity, I jumped into production and never looked back (except maybe if I had followed my first degree, I could be counting ducks on a pond today instead of trying to make someone’s impossible print deadline.

Funny enough, I am trialing this browser called Gener8 where you can earn from your data being used. It’s based on Chrome. Just this morning I notice that there’s an advert for a very bad crowdsourcing site on it and it can’t be removed.

When these companies are so influential and have bags of money to keep their adverts at the forefront of all searches it will only get worse and worse.

Needless to say - uninstalling this browser right now


Just uninstalled it - explained that the software itself was created using skills from qualified graphic designers (ui/ux) and that supporting crowdsourcing sites was harming the industry. Fat lot of use it will do - but I did it. One bee sting is annoying, thousands of bee stings hurt a lot.

I’m unsure which crowdsourcing company you’re referring to, but let’s say it was fffffiver. I just looked it up. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its market capitalization currently stands at 1.3 billion dollars. Their stock price over the last few days is hovering around $36 or $37 per share, which is way down from a year ago when shares were trading for over $200.

Let’s hope the price continues to go down, but the fluctuation really represents an enormous interest in the company that peaked and then got a bit more realistic. No matter how one looks at it, this company and ones like it represent a trend that can’t be dismissed as a fad.

As for Canva, it’s still a private company, but it’s worth about $40 billion, compared to $8 million in 2013. Over the past year alone, its value has increased by $25 billion.

Big investment dollars are going into these companies by those who see them as the future.

I’ve been lucky. I got into graphic design just before it took off in the early '80s, and I am reaching retirement age just as it appears to be changing to the point where it’s unrecognizable.

Very sad. :frowning_face: Especially for all those new designers who plunked down tens of thousands of dollars at diploma mills for degrees they’ll likely never use.

Yup - dread those calls or emails ‘Got it done on 5er and it’s so bad I need it fixed but the event is today! You really need to fix it for me!’ - or ‘Did it on Canva by myself and have print files’

Either scenario is priced higher.
For example, 3 day turnaround is normal price, 2 day is 20% extra, 1 day is 30% extra, same day is 50% extra.

Canva files - automatic triple price for the trouble of fixing the file.

Usually doesn’t go down well.
But then I can explain that I can redo all the work for them, newer better design, and printed and delivered for half the price quoted.

Which they are delighted with - they question why they bothered with Canva in the first place and I tend to get the work from there on out.

If they go somewhere else, which has happened, they print the file, it turns out like crap. It’s happened.


Even Adobe have got in on the amateur market
https://www.adobe.com/express/

Adobe Stock was their first step - offering templates.
I argued with them a lot about templates - and that the software was aimed at professionals who wouldn’t dream of using templates.

They didn’t care - they wanted to target amateurs.

Canva is OK to help amateurs create social media posts. Still, it’s not a professional-caliber tool for professional designers, and it’s not a reliable tool for amateurs to use when producing files for print.

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star-trek-star-trek-tos

The average (“anyone”) can’t be above average.

See the irony here?