Who hasn’t seen a poster or ad that was made up of one large graphic with text over top of it. They’re everywhere. But I’ve gotta say, they can really be horrible. Using your picture this way not only diminishes the effect of the picture, it usually makes the text harder to read. It also means your piece has virtually no white space and the effect is usually a cluttered, unprofessional looking marketing piece.
But, you say, I need that picture in the background in order for it not to be “boring”. Wrong. Find a way to creatively use the picture as something other than just a background. Can it be cropped? Can you use a gradient? If it needs to be smaller, so be it. It’s better for it to actually be readable than to take up the whole page just for the sake of filling space. Another advantage of not using your image for the background… you don’t have to screen it out. Your customers can see it in all of its rich brilliant color and sharpness.
Or, if you still want to make the picture as large as possible, find a way to screen out part of it (and I mean really screen it out until it’s almost not there) and make your words take up less space to fill that new smaller screened out area. Or maybe there’s a part of your picture that can almost work as a blank canvas rather than competing with your text. For example, maybe it’s a landscape photo and part of the sky can hold your text, or a photo of a person who is wearing a monochromatic jacket, or a building with an expansive roof or window, or… well you get the idea.
Turn in tomorrow for part three…
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