How to Make a Conservation Poster

Determine exactly what message you want to get across and what, if anything, you want people to do. For example, in a conservation poster on sharks the message might be that many species are critically endangered and you want people to stop eating shark-fin soup.

Choose a short, snappy headline that gets the message across. It must be short because it needs to be in very large print.

Decide which facts you are going to include on the poster. You cannot include very much about any conservation issue, so be selective. For a shark poster, you might select one fact on how endangered sharks are, another on the numbers killed and another on how they are hunted.

Choose appropriate pictures that support your message. A generic picture does not add much to the poster and uses up space. Pictures produce emotions in people, so decide which emotions you want to evoke. On conservation issues these might be awe at how beautiful a habitat is or how cute an animal is or a shocking fact. A conservation poster aimed to get people to recycle aluminium cans is more effective if it shows before and after pictures of bauxite mining, rather than a soda can.

Select an appropriate font size for the headline and the other text sections. The headline needs to be readable from across a room. The other text needs to be readable from a few feet away.

Lay out the main headline, the facts, the "what people can do" text and the pictures in a layout you feel is effective. There is no right or wrong way to do this, so use your creativity. Stick the sections down or print the posters off when you are finished.