Buying cheap art prints and pop culture posters is an inexpensive way to decorate. Besides being cheap wall art, however, posters serve an important cultural purpose. They are used by propagandists, advertisers, and protestors as a means of mass communicating a message and encouraging action. The action may be as simple as urging consumers to buy detergent or as culturally meaningful as urging young people to boycott corporations for human rights violations or ecological damage. One of the most influential political posters of all time is the Barack Obama “HOPE” poster by Shepard Fairey. At the micro level, of course, hanging cheap art prints and other posters in your apartment or dorm room communicates to others a subtle message about the kind of person you are.

There are many different types of posters you can buy, from cheap art prints to more expensive pin up size posters printed in full color on A3 Standard Silk paper. Posters and cheap art prints come in many different sizes. There are door sized posters and 24X36 posters. There are posters that take up an entire wall and posters that are only slightly larger than a piece of loose leaf paper. Where to buy posters of all types and sizes depends on a number of factors including how rare the poster is. For example, many early posters made for boxing matches are now expensive collectibles because so few of them survived the actual fight. These posters are hard to find. On the other hand, mass produced replicas of “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh are often sold as cheap art prints in grocery shops and office supply stores. The highest price on record for a poster was set on November 15, 2005 when the Reel Poster Gallery in London sold an original poster from the 1927 Fritz Lang film, “Metropolis” for $690,000. Most college students and young adults, however, buy posters for cheap and cheap art prints online or in a neighborhood store.