I want you to think back about our time-before-screens (for those born in the age of digital — imagine it?). At the time, the only way to find out what was happening around you was to look around you. At what? Posters!
And posters are still a key communication tool on and offline today. After all, aren’t social media posts just tiny digital posters?
Creating a professional poster design is easy with our free poster templates and intuitive online editing tool. Pick a design, change it a little or a lot, and you’re done.
Whether you need a poster design for your office, shop window, or website, here are 45 free poster templates you can customize in five minutes or less for all types of situations.
Click to jump ahead:
- 10 free event invite poster templates
- 9 free holiday poster templates
- 11 free office poster templates
- 8 free educational poster templates
- 7 free retail poster templates
- How to make free posters
Watch this to learn how to turn the idea in your head into a great poster. Then keep scrolling for the free templates to get started.
10 free event invite poster templates
Bold colors and high-contrast graphics are perfect to draw eyeballs to your event poster.
You can make text-only posters in minutes. Light or bright colored text on a dark background makes your design stand out, even without any graphics or photos.
On the other hand, you can go for a large graphic and keep the text as a secondary focus. Of course, your graphic needs to be relevant to your event.
We’ve got you covered: our free editing tool has over 40,000 icons and illustrations ready to swap in.
Show attendees a glimpse of what to expect from your event using photos from previous years.
Sometimes less is more. Keep your poster design minimal by only including absolutely necessary information, like what it is, the date/time, and location. Include your website so people can find more information there, if desired.
Draw the viewer’s eye to the most important points with strategic positioning. This one has a nice, bold title and uses red circles to highlight key facts.
For even more emphasis, make your focus points relevant to your event, too, like these “movie ticket stub” callouts.
This one is more corporate or institutional-oriented, perfect for seminars, fundraisers, and more.
Don’t be afraid to get creative, if it suits your brand. This mostly black-and-white, illustration-inspired design is also cost-saving on ink if you’ll need to print it out yourself.
Creative color adds artistic flair, too, like this geometrical gradient background that’s perfect for galleries, museums, or any art-related event.
9 free holiday poster templates
Swap out the clinky glasses for a pumpkin, change the background to black, and boom — Halloween poster. Versatile and minimal, always in style.
Retailers can use this classy holiday-themed sale announcement as both in-store signage and digitally as a social media post. Make it once and get multiple uses out of it.
No one will miss this one when walking by your shop windows!
Promote a fun family entertainment day at your business, or create special holiday-themed gifts with purchases. Again, you only have to make it once and can use it in multiple ways as physical signage and digitally on social media.
Show a creative side with art-inspired designs like this poster template. For Thanksgiving, you could highlight a charity your business is supporting and how customer purchases contribute to it.
Not all posters have to be an 8.5×11” paper or bigger. Experiment with different formats and sizes or design from a digital-first perspective and use the image size the platform you’re posting on requires.
High-contrast white text on a black background, or vice versa, is always a safe bet to snag attention.
A few well-placed starbursts instantly says this is about New Year’s. For Easter, it could be bunny ears. Valentine’s? A heart. You get the idea.
Here it is: your classic holiday party invite. Change the date and location and you’re good to go.
11 free office poster templates
An office just isn’t an office without at least one motivational poster, right? More posters = more motivation. 😉
Unite employees to take part in charitable giving, like the globally popular No-Shave November/Movember campaign benefitting cancer research. Team building and giving back in one.
Let employees know about programs and services you offer to support wellness, or that are part of their benefits plan.
Promote a “Lunch and Learn” series or other skills workshop or social hangout your company organizes.
Here’s a more minimal, corporate approach to promoting professional development events, too.
Give employees a quick and easy way to reference policies and procedures with a one-page overview poster. Print it big and put it on the wall for everyone, or hand out letter-size copies employees can keep at their stations.
Promote wellness by sharing calming resources and other tools to help your employees take care of their whole selves at work.
Bring some fun into the office with a prank, whether it’s April Fool’s or not. Hang up a funny “wanted” poster in the lunchroom and see how long it takes for someone to notice. 😇
Show support for important holidays and values with awareness posters like this one for World Human Rights Day. Other ideas could be for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Memorial Day, and other significant dates. It’s also an opportunity to talk about your company’s inclusion and equality policies to reinforce that everyone belongs.
Encourage employee feedback with this “megaphone” poster. Provide a contact phone and email address for where employees can provide positive and constructive feedback on policies, or submit new ideas. You could also link to a web survey as an anonymous option.
Remind employees of your core values by hanging a graphical representation of them around the office. This one could be about your commitment to great digital customer service experiences. Then, duplicate your poster and edit it to represent other values, too.
8 free educational poster templates
This poster template is perfect for sharing the results of a study, either your own or one relevant to your industry. Although, it’s also pretty great unedited.
Break down key industry terms or features of your product with easy-to-understand posters. You could say it does a great job of distilling the facts.
Educate your audience how your product or service benefits them. Share results from case studies about how much time your customers have saved, or what percentage their sales have grown, etc.
Share key facts with your employees or customers — this fact poster template works well for both.
If you provide a health or personal service, your customers will appreciate an aftercare handout like this. Tattoo artist? List the key points for taking care of a new tattoo. Tanning salon? Handing this out could be the difference between your client keeping their glow or ending up an orange striped mess.
If possible, represent the key points of your educational poster with graphics or icons. More people will be able to understand it, including those whose first language isn’t the one your poster uses.
Artistic yet elegant, this template isn’t just for heart subjects. We have plenty of illustrations matching this black ink style ready to swap in.
Print this hand-washing one out as-is, or customize it to teach any other multi-step process quickly and effectively.
7 free retail poster templates
A bright background color grabs the attention of both foot traffic and digital scrolls going by. Use your brightest brand color, if you have one, or a bold red, yellow, or green.
Here’s another super bold, but more minimal, option. Change “Garage” to whatever you want or for more impact, use a percentage-off sale, like 30%.
While this isn’t exclusively a retail poster template, you could print this as a window cling to help your LGBTQ2S+ customers feel welcome in your store.
Use your wall space to show support for other important causes, too. Use this Ukraine support poster as is, or change the colors and graphics to represent another initiative.
You don’t need to sell 24/7. Use posters to add affordable decor around your shop. Our editor tool features over three million royalty-free stock photos you can use for commercial purposes, or upload your own.
This versatile design works well in-store and for email campaigns, flyers, your website, and social media channels.
Simple designs work best for visibility from the street or across your space. This template is perfect for autumn sales, and you can create something similar by combining a strong background color, a seasonal graphic, and adding “SALE” as large text.
How to make free posters
Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a designer. Our editing tool is so easy, anyone can make pro-quality posters.
You could make one from scratch, but starting with a template saves time and ensures a professional end result. Our printable poster templates are strategically designed to clearly communicate your goal, whether that’s publicizing an event, educating your staff or customers, or inspiring action.
Our drag-and-drop online editor allows you to make any of these templates your own within a few minutes. Heads up: Some of our templates require a premium subscription, but all the ones above are 100% free to use.
Step 1: Create a free Venngage account
You’ll need an account to edit our poster templates — it’s free and we don’t ask for your credit card or firstborn cat. Sign up for Venngage.
Any design you create is automatically saved in your Venngage account so you can access your templates from anywhere.
Step 2: Choose a free poster template to customize
This is probably the hardest part, honestly. Pick a poster template to make your own. Or, browse our other template options, like infographics, presentations, brochures, and a whole lot more.
Step 3: Match your branding
I chose this research poster template to turn into an educational product sheet:
First, I like to switch out the fonts and colors to match my brand. Our Business and higher subscriptions include My Brand Kit where you can store all your brand assets, colors, and more to make template creation faster for your entire team.
These items are easily changed on our free plan, too. Click on anything you want to change — text, a shape, graphic, etc — and use the top menu to change colors, fonts, position, and more.
Step 4: Change the text, images, colors, and more
Click anywhere in a text block to edit it, and click on any image to either delete it or swap in something else.
Use the left side menu to add new content, like text blocks, stock photos, illustrations, background patterns, and more.
The editor is pretty intuitive but we have step-by-step help guides if you get stuck.
Step 5: Share or save your poster
When you’re done, click Preview to confirm everything is how you like it, then either click Share to publish it as an online document (Free users), or Download to save it to your device (Business or Premium users). Downloading also allows you to print out your poster at home, or have it professionally printed.
Make a poster for free today with Venngage
The 45 poster design ideas I shared today are only the tip of the iceberg. We have lots more professionally designed poster templates available for free, and even more for our Business and Premium users.
Fully customizing any of our poster templates is easy with the Venngage online editor, so pick the layout you like the best and start creating your event invite, educational resource, or other types of poster today.
Don’t forget to use your new poster design across social media, too!
