_The proper use of colors will make your posters stand out like
a sore thumb on a one-armed man._
Colors catch the eye. A small child is attracted to a colored Easter egg
where it wouldn’t waste any time on an ordinary piece of hen fruit. We
are all susceptible to the beauty and attraction of colors, and nowhere
in advertising does color cut quite so much of a figure as in posting.
Strong contrasts and striking effects, rather than daintiness and real
artistic combinations, are to be sought for poster work. A poster can
either be made or marred by the proper or improper use of colors.
It is not the intention here to go into an exhaustive treatise on the
harmony of colors, but rather to give a few general hints and suggest
simple color combinations which will be practical when applied to posters.
The primary colors are yellow, blue and red. From these, in combination,
all other colors are made.
Black is universally employed in combination with the primaries to give
strength to the majority of poster printing.
Yellow, orange and red are warm colors, while violet, blue and green
are known as cold colors. The cold colors have a soothing action on
the brain; the warm colors tend to stimulate it. The cold colors are
the more artistic for poster work; the warm colors have the greatest
attention-attracting value.