Say goodbye to outsourcing design: Create posters, banners and flyers for your business in these 4 easy steps

Whether it's a glossy retail brochure, restaurant opening flyers or an informative poster from a healthcare provider, print plays a huge part of communications strategies for many industries. In fact, recent research suggests that retail, manufacturing, healthcare and the public sector all spend 50% of their communications budget on print¹ and others aren't far behind.

But creating high-impact print marketing materials can be expensive, particularly as 95% of companies outsource their print marketing needs to a specialist service provider¹. Typically, this is because they're looking for professional quality and don't have the resources internally to deliver.

It's just not just the final print to think about; without a skilled in-house design team businesses often opt to outsource the entire end-to-end process, from design to production. While outsourcing can provide economies of scale, organisations who just want to produce ad-hoc assets quickly, can experience frustrations around the time and cost of production.

As marketing budgets are tighter than ever, organisations are under pressure to cut costs, but thanks to new solutions on the market like PosterArtist, businesses won't have to compromise on print. Organisations with a Canon device will now have better tools to design and produce marketing assets in-house, where it is not cost-effective to outsource.

PosterArtist is a web-based design and print tool from Canon which makes it simple for anyone to design marketing materials in just minutes. It’s designed to allow any user – with or without design skills – to produce assets quickly, easily and to a high standard.

If you’re a professional who’s short on time, the software allows you to create assets from scratch, but give you the resources to save time and bring your idea to life. Free access to a range of photo libraries including Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels means you can find the images that best promote your business. Meanwhile, you can customise fonts, colours and textures to express your brand style and capture the attention of your customers.

Not everyone sees themselves as a natural designer or has a vision in mind for what they want to achieve. That’s why PosterArtist also offers hundreds of pre-designed templates which you can select from, organised by industry to help you find the most suitable pre-made options. The templates can be easily customised and adapted to suit your application.

Step 1: Select a template, or work from scratch

Either select an existing template from the array of options or go to the home screen to select ‘Create new’.

If you’ve selected a pre-defined template, you’ll now have the option to edit individual elements of the design. Start by considering the background. Templated options will give you a default backdrop, but you can change the colour, or remove it if you prefer. You can also use the shapes tool to drop in shapes of your choice – expand, arrange and colour these on your template or blank canvas to create your background.

Next consider the text. Either edit the template text to suit your needs or drop in your key phrases and information you want to convey if beginning from scratch. Then edit the font, weight, position and colour of text.

Want to add a luxe effect? Choose the Gold/Silver Texture feature to give the impression of a metallic, textured background on text boxes and logos.

If you'd like some help arranging your own selection of text and images, you can use the clever Auto Design function. Simply select your poster category, choose your images and enter titles, and the software will offer helpful ideas on how to improve your design.

PosterArtist is designed to be compatible with all Canon printers. This means you can take advantage of your device’s specific features, for instance adding Fluorescent Pink spot colours with the imagePROGRAF GP Series.

If you’re using a pre-loaded template, some images will already be included, but these can be easily swapped out. You can import images directly, allowing you to upload images you’ve taken yourself. If you’ve already saved images and logos, you’ll see them in the File area, ready for you to add to your design.

Alternatively, access the image banks to browse thousands of potential images and photography that could work with your design. Images are all editable; you can resize, reposition, scale and add effects like drop shadows or frames.

PosterArtist is compatible with printers from across the Canon range, so whether you use PIXMA at home, imageRUNNER ADVANCE or i-SENSYS in the office, or imagePRESS or imagePROGRAF in your professional print room, you can be sure your printout matches what you see on the computer screen. Simply click the 'Proceed to Print' button and watch your design come to life.

Want more support in how to use PosterArtist? Watch the step-by-step video here.