Production poster: two spot colours and an 8 m viewing distance
Te Awa College is staging a senior production and the drama department has asked student designer Rangi for an A2 poster (420 × 594 mm) to go in the main corridor and on the hall doors. The print budget covers two spot colours on 160 gsm stock - PMS 185 red and black. Sponsor logos must appear at no less than 18 mm wide and the school logo at no less than 15 mm. Rangi's draft sets the show title in a condensed serif at 40 mm cap height, the dates in 6 mm type, the venue in 5 mm and the booking URL in 4 mm. He has reversed the dates out of a PMS 185 block and left everything else black on white. The poster will be read at 8 m down the corridor and at 300 mm by someone standing at the door.
1. Evaluate Rangi's type sizes against the two viewing distances, and recommend what should change.
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A rough working rule for signage is about 1 mm of cap height for every 120 mm of viewing distance if the text is critical, relaxing to roughly 1 mm per 200 mm for a headline that only needs to be recognised.
At 8 m that puts critical text at about 65 mm and a headline floor around 40 mm. So the 40 mm title is borderline - legible as a shape, but only if the letterforms are bold and high-contrast. A condensed serif works against him: thin strokes and tight counters close up at distance.
The 6 mm dates are far below the threshold - at 8 m they are effectively invisible, and the date is the single most important piece of information after the title. The 5 mm venue and 4 mm URL are fine, but only for the 300 mm reader.
Recommendation: two deliberate type scales. Distance tier - title at 70–90 mm bold sans, date at 25–30 mm, both readable at 8 m. Close tier - venue, times, price, URL, sponsors at 4–6 mm for the reader at the door. Rangi can proof this cheaply: print at A4, which is a 50% linear reduction of A2, and view it from 4 m. If it fails at 4 m, it fails at 8 m.
2. Explain the risks of Rangi's reversed-out red block in a two-spot-colour job, and how he should resolve them.
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Three risks stack up.
First, registration. Two spot colours on an uncoated 160 gsm stock means the red and black plates can drift by a fraction of a millimetre. Reversed white type sits inside a solid, so misregistration shows as a fringe or a halo on every letter - most obvious on small type, which is exactly where he has used it.
Second, ink spread and dot gain. Uncoated stock absorbs ink, so a solid PMS 185 area prints slightly darker and the counters of small reversed letterforms fill in. At 6 mm cap height this matters.
Third, contrast is not symmetric. White on a saturated mid-red is acceptable in pure luminance terms but is harder to read than black on white for many viewers, and for red-green colour-blind readers the red simply reads as a dark grey field.
Resolution: keep the red as a large field and put black type on it or on white, rather than reversing small white type. If he wants reversed type, restrict it to the title at 70 mm+ where a fringe can't destroy the letterform, and ask the printer for a proof on the actual stock before the run.
3. The poster carries a title, dates, venue, price, booking URL, three sponsor logos and the school logo. Recommend a hierarchy and justify the order.
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At 8 m, the reader gets one glance. The poster should answer, in order: what is it, when is it, how do I act.
- Title (largest, 70–90 mm) - the only thing that stops a person walking.
- Date block (25–30 mm, bold) - second question everyone asks; pairs naturally with the title as a single unit.
- Image or graphic device - optional, but if used it must not compete with the title for the top of the hierarchy.
- Venue, times, price (8–10 mm) - mid-tier, read from 2–3 m as the reader approaches.
- Booking URL and school logo (4–6 mm) - close-tier only.
- Sponsor logos at their contractual minima (18 mm) - legible but grouped and pushed to the foot, so they read as a credit block rather than competing messages.
The justification is that a poster is read in a sequence of distances, not at once. Rangi should build three clear size tiers with visible contrast between them - if the date and the URL are within 2 mm of each other, the hierarchy isn't doing any work; it is just a list of facts at slightly different sizes.