Which process should I pick if I only want it to look handmade?

Risograph. Three bright inks, a millimetre of misregistration and paper grain read as handmade immediately, and the process suits bold simple shapes, which is what an event poster wants anyway.

Can I combine a process with a design movement?

Yes, and it is usually the best result. A Bauhaus layout printed as a risograph, or a Swiss grid screenprinted in two inks. Name the layout first and the process second.

Why does the model keep returning a clean version?

Because clean is the average. Every entry here names the specific defect to include, such as a coloured fringe at each edge or ink bleeding into paper fibres, and asking for the defect by name is what fixes it.

Print and reproduction looks

The printing processes, and the wording for what each does to ink.

These are not styles anybody designed. They are what a machine does to an image: how many inks it can lay down, how badly they line up, what texture the paper leaves behind. Ask for a process rather than a look and the poster gets a physical quality that no amount of styling adds, because the imperfections come from somewhere.

Ink laid down badly on purpose

Cheap duplicators and few inks. Misregistration, grain and visible dots are the whole appeal.

Risograph

Two or three fluorescent inks, misregistered, with grain and visible overprint.

Screenprint Pop

Thick opaque ink in big flat areas, with hard edges and one layer slightly out.

Halftone Newsprint

A photograph reduced to coarse dots on grey paper, with ink bleeding into the fibres.

Mimeograph

Faint purple ink on cheap paper, blotchy, with letters that have started to fill in.

Pressed, bitten and exposed

Processes that leave a physical mark: type pushed into paper, lines bitten into metal, and paper turned blue by the sun.

Stamp and Letterpress

Bold inked shapes with slight imperfections, pressed into thick paper you can feel.

Etching and Engraving

Tone built entirely from fine parallel lines, the way a banknote is drawn.

Cyanotype

White lines on deep Prussian blue, with brush marks at the edge of the coating.

Few inks, drawn by hand

Where the constraint is not the machine but the decision: scissors instead of a pen, one accent colour, or a single lurid scene.

Cut Paper

Organic shapes cut with scissors, laid flat on colour, with the scissor marks left in.

Botanical Scientific Illustration

A specimen drawn precisely, labelled, and laid out like a page from a reference book.

Monochrome and One Accent

Black, white, and one loud colour used only where it has to be looked at.

Penny Dreadful

A lurid wood-engraved scene at the worst possible moment, under a screaming title.

Make one of them

Copy a prompt into an image model and pay for that one run. No subscription.

Open an image model

Other style groups

Graphic design movementsThe movements, and the wording that gets the look of each one.18 design movements Art movements as postersEach movement written as a poster the movement itself might have printed.21 art movements Handmade and folkWays to make a poster that looks like a person made it, not a studio.9 handmade looks Place and eraNational and period styles, each with the rules that made it local.14 regional styles Propaganda and protestPolitical traditions, and the visual rules each used to move people.7 political traditions Music scenesThe scenes, and the graphic rules each used to say who a night was for.10 music scenes Screen and digitalThe looks that came from a screen, and the wording that gets each one.10 digital looks

Drawing and render stylesDrawing a character rather than printing a sheet? The same reference, for how a picture is made.

A process brings its own imperfections: misregistration, grain, an impression in the paper, a coarse dot. Those details are what make a poster look physical, and they are very hard to add convincingly after the fact.