Colour Schemes

Colours are a major feature of a poster as they show great relevance and connote a variety of meanings. For instance, the colours on a particular poster and tell the audience what the genre the poster is coming from. For example, black can connote a series of emotions, such as love, passion and desire. However, it can also symbolise signs of aggression, hatred and blood, which has a further connotation of death.

In order to create my poster, I will use the program called Photoshop that will allow me to enhance my poster with effects, above all making sure it links to the horror genre. In addition, I also want to obtain a connection between my poster and the previous task, my trailer. This will create a sense of ‘thinking ahead and attain a high aspect of professionalism. This too will help the target audience to identify what specific genre my poster is reflecting by remembering the trailer and increasing the audiences’ interest level.

According to my analysis and research, colours serve a visual aid and will cause the audience to be highly attracted to my poster or not. In order to have the full attention of the viewer I will edge toward constructing my poster in a conventional manner. This will make my poster more appealing as it is easier from the audience POV what genre the poster is advertising. As a result, my genre is horror, therefore staying on a conventional path my poster will consist of three main colours, red, black and white.

In more detail, these conventional colours work extremely well together according to my research. This is because they all connote different connotations and when printed on the same media text assist one another and balance the perception exposed to the audience. To pin point this statement, the connotation of red in a horror sense will represent the idea of blood and enhance the level of death and violence. However, although red is a bold and rich meaningful colour, the shade of black also goes well with this as it too symbolises elements of horror. These features will be the connotation of the colour being isolated and darkness, which both contribute and emphasis the connotations of the elements of the poster that are red. The horror genre is re-enhanced from yet another but different connotation of black. This colour is used is a conventional horror state as the background of poster, which represents huge signs of ambiguity and reveals components of forming an enigma and suspense toward the audience and ultimately adding to the potent theme of mystery. Red and black are strong masculine colours, which is why the colour white is introduced. This conventional colour combines the three colours all together as it is a colour that stands out on a conventional black foreground colour. The white can also relate to horror but from a different angle, as it connotes a calm and tranquil tone and therefore balancing the colors on the poster. This is because the purity of white allows the colours to pivot equally, as it situated mainly on the darkness of black and then ties in with brightness of red. Overall, this makes the poster eye-catching and attractive to the audience.





This is also evident from the colour wheel and to enhance my research I have looked into a colour wheel, as to see how close the colours, red, black and white are to each other. I will also look at what other colours work best that complement each other and can be used simultaneously from the purpose of the colour wheel to increase audience viewing.