One important piece of advice in this kind of work is to avoid making the lettering look freakish by forming some of the letters quite tiny and others excessively large in the same word. This is one of the most prominent signs of the amateur.
CHAPTER XXIV
HAND-WRITTEN POSTERS, ETC.
It is very useful at times to be able to produce quickly a hand-written poster. It is not always desirable to have printed ones, especially when one or two copies are all that are required, and a hand-written poster can be very effective even if it is produced hurriedly. It is, however, very essential that these should be written as quickly as possible, as the price that the writer would have to charge for a poster that he had spent a whole day in writing would make it quite prohibitive. Therefore speed of production is an important factor that must be considered in connection with the hand-written poster.
It is well to remember that a poster must attract attention. Unless there is something arresting about it, comparatively few people will stop and read it, however well it may be written. Of course all posters do not depend upon the lettering alone to attract, but in any case the lettering should be distinct and prominent. However, the type of poster described here is composed of lettering alone, and so depends entirely on the display of this to catch the eye.
An Attractive Piece of Lettering.
By kind permission of
Messrs. Marshall & Snelgrove, Ltd.
A poster that is written comparatively badly may attract attention much more than one that is written well but without any display, because the badly-written poster may have something striking about it that compels attention. The thing to aim at is to make the poster prominent without annoying people by offending their artistic susceptibilities.