"Colors" — A Poster for Pre-K and Kindergarten Classrooms

Because I am interested in developing materials that can be used in everyday classrooms, I decided to create an educational poster for this project. I was inspired by various posters that I’ve seen in pre-K and Kindergarten-level classrooms. I chose a “Colors” poster because I wanted to incorporate many colors and various images in my design. Plus, I can use this poster in my own classroom.

I began with a gradient background. Instead of a two-color gradient, I designed a rainbow gradient to complement the overall theme. Classrooms are colorful, and this poster is specifically meant to teach colors, so I thought a rainbow background was fitting. In the gradient settings, I inserted multiple “stops” (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta) to achieve the rainbow effect. I muted these colors a bit because I didn’t want the background to overpower the rest of the image.

Next, I added a title and a white rounded-rectangle shape. I used glow and shadow effects on both of these layers to give them more dimension. I decided on a fun, creative font that I think matches the classroom theme for the title and the rest of the text. I used the rounded rectangle as a background for the main part of the poster—the colors themselves. For each color, I inserted corresponding images that I found through creative commons. I needed to remove the backgrounds using the magic eraser tool for most of the images. Then, I resized, rotated, and/or flipped each image to fit the allotted space. As finishing touches, I added glow and shadow effects to these layers as well to match the rest of the poster.