Sale Poster Maker
A good shop-window poster has one job: make a passer-by understand the offer in under three seconds. This maker keeps you to the six lines that matter — headline, discount, a short subheading, your store name, the dates and one honest footer line — and lays them out at true A4 size in a colour theme matched to your kind of shop. Preview it live, download a print-ready PNG, and tape it in the window tonight. Everything happens in your browser; nothing is uploaded anywhere.
How to make a sale poster that gets read
- Choose one headline word. SALE, CLEARANCE, or your event name — one word, as large as possible. The moment a headline becomes a sentence, people walking at normal speed have already passed your window.
- State the best honest number. “UP TO 50% OFF” only works if a real share of stock is genuinely at 50%. Shoppers forgive a modest discount; they do not forgive a fake one, and in many countries an untrue “up to” claim breaks advertising rules.
- Pick the theme that matches the shop, not the season. Red retail for supermarkets and value stores, black and gold for boutiques, jewellers and salons, teal for pharmacies, grocery and fresh food, navy for electronics, services and anything bought on trust.
- Dates create the urgency. A poster without dates quietly becomes wallpaper within a week. A visible end date gives people a reason to come in today — and reminds your own staff when to take it down.
Posters for every kind of promotion
Seasonal sales. Eid, Diwali, Christmas, back-to-school and end-of-season clearances all follow the same anatomy: event headline, strongest discount, the departments included in the subheading, and the exact date range. Swap the theme colour and the same layout carries you through the whole retail calendar.
Grand openings. Replace SALE with “NOW OPEN” and the discount line with your opening offer — a free item, a first-week percentage, or a tasting day. The store name line does double duty here, because for an opening the name is the news.
Clearance and closing-down. The diagonal band in retail red is the classic clearance look worldwide. Keep the subheading factual — “All remaining stock must go” — and update the discount weekly by reprinting rather than crossing out numbers by hand, which destroys trust.
Cafés, salons and services. Posters are not only for shops with stock. A café's “COMBO DEAL”, a salon's weekday offer or a gym's January membership push all fit the same layout — the discount line becomes the deal, and the footer carries the condition that matters.
Poster specifications
| Property | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Finished size | A4 — 210 x 297 mm | Prints on any home or office printer, no trimming needed |
| Download size | 1588 x 2246 px PNG | About 200 dpi at A4 — sharp text, and clean when enlarged to A3 |
| Headline height | 45–60 mm on paper | Readable from roughly 6 metres — pavement plus shopfront |
| Recommended paper | 160–250 gsm matte | Stays flat in the window and does not glare under lights |
Print at 100% scale for a true A4 poster. If you take the file to a copy shop for A3, ask them to scale proportionally — the ratio is identical, so nothing gets cropped. Mount the poster on a dark card backing if your window gets strong backlight; the extra contrast keeps the headline punchy at midday.
Design tips that separate offers from noise
- One poster, one message. Two offers on one sheet halve the power of both. If you run a sale and a new arrival, print two posters and hang them side by side.
- Odd numbers feel honest. “37% OFF” — because it came from real prices — often outperforms a rounded “40%” that shoppers suspect was invented. Use the number your pricing actually produces.
- Contrast beats colourfulness. Every theme here pairs one strong colour with a neutral ground. Posters that use four bright colours at once read as clutter from three metres away.
- Refresh before it fades into the background. Regulars stop seeing a poster after about ten days even if the sale still runs. Changing the theme colour while keeping the same offer resets attention for the cost of one sheet of paper.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I print this poster on US Letter paper instead of A4?
- The poster is designed at the A4 ratio (210 x 297 mm). On a US Letter printer, choose "fit to page" in the print dialog: the whole design scales down slightly and gains a small white border, which looks fine in a window. If your shop stocks A4 paper — standard almost everywhere outside North America — print at 100% with no border at all.
- Why do the colours look different on paper than on my screen?
- Screens emit light (RGB) while printers lay down ink (CMYK), so saturated reds and teals usually print a shade deeper than they appear on a monitor. The four themes here were chosen to survive that shift: they rely on strong contrast between the headline, background and badge rather than on subtle shades that can wash out in print.
- How large should the headline be to read from the street?
- A useful rule is 25 mm of letter height for every 3 metres of viewing distance. The SALE headline in this design is roughly 45–60 mm tall depending on word length, so it reads from about 6 metres — across a pavement and a shopfront. If your window faces a road rather than a footpath, keep the headline to one short word and let the discount badge do the rest.
- Can I share the poster on social media instead of printing it?
- Yes — the downloaded PNG is a high-resolution image (1588 x 2246 pixels), so it works well as a feed post on Facebook or Instagram. It is a portrait poster ratio rather than a 9:16 story ratio, so for stories you would need to place it on a coloured background in your app of choice; the file itself is print-first by design.
- How do I make a window poster last outdoors?
- Print on the heaviest matte paper your printer accepts (160–250 gsm), mount it inside the glass rather than outside where rain reaches it, and keep it out of direct afternoon sun — red pigments fade fastest in sunlight. For a poster that must live outside, take the PNG to a copy shop and ask for lamination; the file resolution is high enough for an A3 enlargement as well.