There's a moment, somewhere between the first dance and the last toast, between the confetti and the cake, when I find myself thinking about what photo I've taken that would stand as the film poster of the day.
Not a scrapbook page. Not a photo dump. A poster. The kind that stops you, makes you lean in, makes you feel something before you've even read a single word.
That instinct is exactly how my Custom Poster Design was born.
Inspired by the Language of Cinema
I've been obsessed with film titles and poster design for as long as I can remember. There's something about the way a great film communicates its entire emotional world through a single image, a few lines of type, a color palette, before you've even sat down in the theater. That visual economy is thrilling to me as a designer.
I spent a semester in college doing a deep-dive design project inspired by Saul Bass — the legendary graphic designer behind some of the most iconic title sequences and film posters in cinema history. His work for Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest) is a masterclass in using bold geometry, restrained color, and deliberate tension to tell a story in a glance. It changed the way I think about visual storytelling permanently.
That same philosophy — every element earns its place, every detail tells the story — is what drives my approach to these custom designs.
When I design a custom poster for a wedding or a milestone birthday, I'm asking the same questions Bass, and other great artists, asked: What is the emotional truth of this moment? What details, when distilled, say everything? What image, when framed just right, becomes something a person will want to look at for the rest of their life?
Every Detail Is a Credit. Every Photo Is a Scene.
The secret to a cinematic poster isn't just the design. And it isn't just the photograph. It's knowing which image to build the design around, and having the eye to find it.
When I'm working through a wedding or engagement gallery, I'm looking for the frame that has that quality. The light that feels like a film still. The composition that already has a title treatment living in the negative space. The moment that is specific enough to be intimate, but universal enough to be timeless.
From there, the design takes shape around the details of your story specifically:
- The venue, rendered as a location credit in the way films credit their shooting locations
- The date, styled like a release year beneath your names
- Your names — the stars of the feature
- For weddings: the ceremony venue, reception venue, the officiant, the wedding party — all woven into the design as they would appear in a film's opening credits
- For milestone birthdays or bachelorette trips: the places you stayed, the restaurants, the cities — all illustrated through logos, icons, and custom typography that maps the adventure
Every poster is a different story. Every story deserves its own design.
Built for People Who Are the Main Characters of Their Own Lives
My clients celebrate the big things and the small things. They have an appreciation for art and creativity. They are drawn to things that are timeless and truly unique — not a mass-produced print from a big box store, but something made with them and for them, that could only exist because of the specific, beautiful details of their specific, beautiful life.
That's who this poster is for.
I love when clients bring these to engagement parties or weddings and set them up with Sharpies — suddenly you have this striking piece of art as a guest book, everyone signs it, and at the end of the night you take home something that is simultaneously a portrait of your relationship and a record of the people who showed up to celebrate it.
The Eye Behind the Lens is Also Behind the Design
I am equally a photographer and a designer. Not one who dabbles in the other, but genuinely both, with the degrees, the career history, and the obsessive cross-pollination to prove it.
I graduated from Kansas State University with degrees in both Graphic Design and Photography. From there, I started my professional career as a UI/UX designer before moving into marketing and brand director roles that drew on everything at once — strategy, creative direction, design, copywriting, visual storytelling. Over 13+ years of working across those mediums simultaneously, something interesting happened: my photography became deeply influenced by design thinking, and my design became deeply influenced by how I see through a lens.
When I compose a photograph, I'm naturally thinking about negative space, light, framing, and how that image could eventually live inside a design. When I approach a poster layout, I'm thinking like a photographer: What is the emotional center of this image? Where does the eye go first? What gets stripped away so the essential thing can breathe?
That cross-wired perspective is what makes these posters different. Most custom poster services are template shops. You submit photos, they fill in the blanks, and what you get back reflects a template, not your story.
The Jacob Elordi of It All (Why This Matters)
If you've been on social media recently, you've seen the Wuthering Heights poster moment. The new film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi has a poster so cinematic, so perfectly composed, that people are lining up in movie theater lobbies to take photos with it. People are positioning themselves in front of Margot to make it look like they're the ones kissing Jacob Elordi. It's everywhere. It's iconic. It's show-stopping in the most literal sense in that people are stopping, physically, to be part of it.That's the power of a great poster. It doesn't just hang on a wall. It becomes something people want to step into.
That's what I'm chasing when I design yours.
If you've worked with me on your wedding or engagement session, you already have a gallery full of images built for this. And if you haven't, I'd love to talk about both. View my wedding & engagement portfolio here.
I also shoot creative portraits, lifestyle and brand work, and editorial & fashion, so whatever your story is, I'm sure we can create something worth framing together.
What the Process Looks Like
- Order your Custom Poster in your preferred size, starting at 16x20 and available up to fully custom dimensions
- Receive my personalization guide via email. I'll walk you through everything I need: photos, dates, names, venues, details
- Collaborate on the design. This isn't a template, and you're not just a form submission. I'll share a draft and we'll refine it together
- Approve and print. Your poster is printed on premium archival paper and shipped in a protective tube, ready to frame
Sizes available: 16x20 · 20x24 · 24x30 · Custom
Starting at $150
A Few Ideas to Get You Started
Not sure if your moment is poster-worthy? Here's a short list of things I've turned into cinematic art:
- Weddings: the full cast and credits, the venues, the love story
- Engagements: a "coming soon" announcement that's unlike anything from a box store
- Bachelorette trips: the cities, the squad, the itinerary, all of it
- Milestone birthdays: 30, 40, 50, with the places, the people, the logos of everywhere the celebration took you
- Anniversaries: revisiting the story, updating the credits
- Elopements: intimate, cinematic, exactly right
Let's Make Something Worth Framing
I let the moment guide my art, for resulting imagery that feels genuine and raw. Whether that moment is captured through my lens or built into a design that lives on your wall for decades, the goal is always the same: something honest, something beautiful, something yours.
Ready to become the star of your own story?
Want to explore working together on photography first? Read more about my wedding photography services here.
Or reach out directly: stephaniemikuls@gmail.com
Stephanie Mikuls is a Denver-based photographer and designer. She holds degrees in Graphic Design and Photography from Kansas State University and has been published in Cherry Creek Lifestyle, Boulder Lifestyle, MOB Journal, and more. View her full portfolio here.