"Sell Your Product" Poster

Background Information
A poster has the same basic components whether it is done on a computer or on a large placard. Ask students what they think a poster is used for, and why they might see posters around school or in town. The idea is to get information across with an eye-catching design that will cause the viewer to come in closer to get necessary information. Students should be accustomed to seeing posters at video shops or the movies. Review different ways of achieving balance.

Preparation
Show children examples of posters. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfonse Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, and others frequently made posters, but other less-known artists were the backbone of the industry. Decide before beginning what medium you prefer the students to use. This project could be effective using poster paint, cut paper images combined with cut paper lettering, or marker. Any of these could be used alone or in combination with the others. If you have access to a computer and would like to have the students do their lettering on it, this is certainly the simplest way to do the lettering portion of this project. To enlarge computer lettering, it can be copied on an overhead transparency and projected onto the posterboard.

Procedures

• Make copies of the "Sell Your Product" Poster student page.
• Distribute them to all students.
• Go over the directions with the students.

• Analyze Marketing Strategies
  Help students become aware of marketing strategies. Ask them which boxes of cereal they first notice when they go into a store. Ask if there are certain colors that seem to be used more often than others. Discuss advertising on television, and whether the actual product lived up to their expectations. Talk about billboards, advertising on the Internet, telephone soliciting, and ads in a newspaper.

Excerpted from A Survival Kit for the Elementary/Middle School Art Teacher.