Art Posters

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What You Need to Know About Art Posters

Fine art posters allow people who love visual culture to bring some of their favourite images into their homes or flats at reasonable prices. Additionally, it seems that there are as many different types of posters and prints for sale as there are people to collect them. From vintage travel prints to modern album cover posters, there is a fine art poster out there for you when you shop affordable art posters on eBay.

The difference between a poster and a print

While it’s true that posters and prints are produced in larger quantities, there are some key differences. Most posters for sale have been mass-produced, usually by means of offset printing. Although cheap posters in the UK may have been produced by the tens or hundreds of thousands, art print posters usually have a more limited run. Only a couple of thousand or even a couple of hundred prints may exist of a single image.

Companies that produce fine art prints, including some of the A3 posters for sale you see in a museum or tourist gift shops, use better papers and inks to produce their images. This is why a poster of a famous painting and a print of the same image can look so different. It’s also why many fine art prints last longer than some of the cheaper eBay posters you’ll find. Finally, it’s important to note that some prints get printed on materials other than paper, like wood or canvas, which also makes them more valuable.

Features that make a new or used poster collectable

Most people collect posters because they have an image that has been deemed iconic in some way. These posters capture the spirit of the times in which they were created. That is to say, the combination of the artwork, the fonts, and the printing processes tell you something about the era that the poster came out of.

A good example of this is album cover posters. A few rock album cover examples are Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” the Beatles’ “Abbey Road,” or Led Zeppelin’s debut album. Album covers like these get turned into album posters and prints, using printing techniques like a Radiograph technical pen in the case of Led Zeppelin’s album.

Additionally, collectable posters for sale in the UK are often also rare, even though the poster may have originally been massed produced. While this seems counterintuitive, it’s not. In the past, people tended to disregard mass-produced cheap posters; many got thrown away. Because people didn’t keep them, they eventually became rare and therefore, valuable.

Which specific printing techniques are used for posters?

Printing has a long history. As such, it’s possible to find posters for sale that have been created using some pretty old techniques, like woodblock or engraving printing. However, these days, it's more common to encounter a poster that has been produced by offset printing in the case of the poster. Modern prints are often giclee prints. Posters can be, too. When you’re buying a poster, keep in mind that the printing technique and the material the poster is printed on will affect the value and the price.

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