# Poster Design - Using Only Typography - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/poster-design-using-only-typography/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Quick win · Rated 5 /10 # Poster Design - Using Only Typography Updated August 2026 Lindsay Marsh · Over 500,000 Design Students & Counting! Beginner · 35 min A working designer's raw, unedited screen-record of building one type-only poster, mistakes, backtracks and all, not a polished tutorial. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fposter-design-using-only-typography%2F373499348) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What the course actually is "Poster Design - Using Only Typography" is not a tutorial in the conventional sense. Lindsay Marsh sets a self-imposed constraint (build a poster using nothing but type, no photography or added shapes) and records the process of solving it, unscripted, with the false starts left in. The first two lessons cover the bulk of the work: picking a word, testing typefaces (starting with Helvetica, moving to a rounder geometric face), breaking the word into individual character layers, and physically nudging letters around until a shape starts to feel right. A stretch of the course is spent on an idea that gets abandoned entirely, staggering the letters down the page, before the design shifts to a connected, overlapping wordmark where letters like the G and O visually merge. ## Where the craft shows The strongest material is technical and specific. Marsh manually draws shadow shapes with the pen tool rather than using a drop-shadow effect, then later revisits the same shapes with the Shape Builder tool to cut negative-space gaps between letters, a small but genuinely useful trick for making overlapping type feel interlocked rather than just stacked. The texture lesson is similarly concrete: downloaded grunge textures get cycled through blend modes (Overlay, Hard Light, Multiply) with visible before-and-after comparisons, and the course briefly mentions combining multiple textures rather than relying on one. The color-adjustment passes, using Edit > Colors > Adjust Color Balance across grouped layers, show a fast way to test moods (steel red, neon pink, muted yellow) without manually recoloring every shape. ## Where it falls short Because this is a process recording rather than a designed lesson, there is very little explicit instruction. Concepts like kerning, optical alignment, and contrast are mentioned in passing, as things Marsh is doing, but rarely explained in a way a newer designer could generalize to their own project. The Cross Check Your Spelling lesson has no real content. The artboard lesson on generating color variations is a single short setup with no follow-through. Skillshare's own blurb calls this "intermediate," which undersells how much prior Illustrator fluency it assumes: layers, the direct selection tool, and shape operations are all used without being introduced. ## The verdict This works best as a behind-the-scenes look at how a professional designer thinks through a self-imposed constraint, valuable for anyone who wants to see indecision, dead ends, and revision treated as a normal part of the process rather than something to hide. It does not work as a structured lesson in typography or poster layout. Someone hoping to learn composition principles, type pairing, or a repeatable design process will find the class thin. Someone who already knows their way around Illustrator and wants a candid, warts-and-included look at one designer's workflow, plus two or three specific technique moments worth stealing, will get more out of the 35 minutes. The class project prompt itself, make a poster using only type, is a good constraint-based exercise regardless of how thin the instruction around it is. The standout The Shape Builder demonstration, showing exactly how to punch negative-space gaps between overlapping letters instead of relying on flat shadow shapes, is the one concrete, reusable Illustrator skill in the course. ## What you will learn - · How to rough out a wordmark by breaking a single word into individually placed character layers instead of typing it as one text block - · Techniques for adjusting letter connections and kerning by hand, including drawing custom joins with the pen tool where letterforms don't naturally meet - · How to build layered drop shadows manually with the pen tool and later punch negative-space gaps between letters using the Shape Builder tool - · How to apply and blend downloaded textures using layer blend modes like Multiply, Overlay and Hard Light to add grain and wear - · How to use color balance adjustments across grouped layers to quickly test different mood and tone variations - · How to set up multiple artboards in Illustrator to generate and compare color variations of the same design Best for: Beginner-to-intermediate Illustrator users who already know the basic tools and want to watch an experienced designer's messy real-time decision-making on a single typographic layout. Skip it if: Anyone wanting structured typography theory, step-by-step instructions, or a beginner-friendly walkthrough of Illustrator's basic tools, since the course assumes fluency and offers almost no explicit teaching. Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Clarity of Instruction Audio & Video Quality [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fposter-design-using-only-typography%2F373499348)