Handmade and folk

Nine ways to make a poster that looks like a person made it, not a studio.

These styles all sit outside professional design, either because nobody trained the person who made them or because the tradition predates the profession. They are the strongest answer to a poster that looks generated, because the thing a model finds hardest to fake is a specific kind of clumsiness. Ask for the clumsiness by name and it lands.

Made by a child, or made to look it

3

Poster paint, sugar paper and wax crayon. Three ways of borrowing a child's hand, each with a different amount of design on top.

Child Paint with Pro Typography: A genuine child's poster paint picture, with sharp professional typography laid over it.

Child Paint with Pro Typography

A genuine child's poster paint picture, with sharp professional typography laid over it.

School Cutout Collage: Torn sugar paper stuck down with visible glue, cotton wool clouds and wonky letters.

School Cutout Collage

Torn sugar paper stuck down with visible glue, cotton wool clouds and wonky letters.

Crayon Folk Handmade: Wax crayon on rough paper, drawn by somebody who is not a drawer.

Crayon Folk Handmade

Wax crayon on rough paper, drawn by somebody who is not a drawer.

Photocopier and scissors

2

The two tools of self-publishing. High contrast, no budget, and a deadline of tonight.

Punk Photocopied Fanzine: Third-generation photocopy: crushed blacks, ransom-note letters and everything slightly skewed.

Punk Photocopied Fanzine

Third-generation photocopy: crushed blacks, ransom-note letters and everything slightly skewed.

Zine Cut-and-Paste: Everything literally stuck down: photocopies, tape, handwriting and typewriter slips.

Zine Cut-and-Paste

Everything literally stuck down: photocopies, tape, handwriting and typewriter slips.

Folk traditions

4

Four living traditions with fixed rules: what gets drawn, in what colours, and in what order. Older than graphic design and stronger than most of it.

Calavera: Skeletons doing ordinary things, cut as a relief print in black with hot flat colour.

Skeletons doing ordinary things, cut as a relief print in black with hot flat colour.

Pennsylvania Dutch: Symmetrical folk motifs, hex stars and blackletter, drawn as a hand-illuminated certificate.

Pennsylvania Dutch

Symmetrical folk motifs, hex stars and blackletter, drawn as a hand-illuminated certificate.

Madhubani: Every gap filled with pattern, figures with huge outlined eyes, and a double-ruled border.

Every gap filled with pattern, figures with huge outlined eyes, and a double-ruled border.

Rosemaling: Flowing C and S scrolls of painted flowers, with a loaded brush and a visible highlight stroke.

Flowing C and S scrolls of painted flowers, with a loaded brush and a visible highlight stroke.

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 movementsEighteen movements, and the wording that gets the look of each one.18 design movements Art movements as postersTwenty-one movements, each written as a poster the movement might have printed.21 art movements Print and reproduction looksEleven printing processes, and the wording that gets what each one does to ink.11 print processes Place and eraFourteen national and period styles, each with the rules that made it local.14 regional styles Propaganda and protestSeven political traditions, and the visual rules each one used to move people.7 political traditions Music scenesTen scenes, and the graphic rules each one used to say who the night was for.10 music scenes Screen and digitalTen looks that came from a screen, and the wording that gets each one.10 digital looks

Cinematic techniquesShooting a video rather than printing a poster? The same reference, for the camera.

Because the default output is smooth and competent. A specific kind of clumsiness, torn paper edges, crayon going past the line, a photocopy with no mid tones, is the fastest way out of that, and it reads as honest rather than as cheap.