Fix this poster.

Take things away

The border, the starburst, the gradient and the drop shadows carry no information, so they go. What remains has empty space around it, and the space does real work: the eye knows where to rest and where to look first.

Use one typeface and let size do the talking

The script and the woodtype are replaced by one sans serif, in the line of Akzidenz-Grotesk and Neue Haas Grotesk, the face we now call Helvetica. A very big headline against small text leaves no doubt about the reading order.

This is not a law. Jan Tschichold, who ruled out serifs in Die neue Typographie, later admitted the book was too rigid.

Put everything on a grid

Karl Gerstner's grid for Capital magazine, begun in 1962, is 58 units wide with gaps of 2. That number divides exactly into one, two, three, four, five or six columns, so a layout can change while the structure under it holds.

This poster uses the same 58 units. Move the slider and the details drop into the new columns. Grouped as where, when and what, they read as information instead of a pile of text.

Move it off centre

Centred lines each start somewhere different, and the result sits still. Set flush left, they share one hard edge. Moving the headline away from the middle leaves an uneven area of space that pulls against it.

The grid keeps that imbalance deliberate, because the headline can only start where a column starts.

Use a form or a photograph

Swiss designers preferred elementary geometry, or photographs, which they saw as a truer record than drawing. Josef Müller-Brockmann built his 1955 Beethoven poster for the Tonhalle Zürich from concentric arcs. Armin Hofmann's 1959 Giselle poster sets a soft photograph against hard type.

Keep to one colour

Colour marks what matters, so one is enough. Pick a white or black ground and a single strong accent, or flood the whole sheet with the accent. That was the last mistake.