There is no reasonable way to argue that the "before" poster is better designed. Centered text, contact information typeset as loudly as the rest of the content, mixing uppercase and boldface for section headers, a URL bleeding into the margins.
Neither design is good, but the "before" design communicates nothing clearly, while the "after" at least rewards a glance with the knowledge that:
* there is a regular class schedule
* you can come visit without an appointment
That information is also in the "before" design, but you have to read carefully to find it.
The most important thing to understand design is that a good design has clear goals. The critiques I'm reading of the "after" design seem to be based on the idea that all the information in the poster is equally relevant; they ignore the goals of the poster --- by necessity, since the "before" poster objectively doesn't have a goal, which it deliberately demonstrates by not having any hierarchy.
If you don't care about the goals of the poster, you can just go with whether you like or dislike the thin black rules dividing it up, or whether you like big text or little text. But you're missing the point if you do that.
> There is no reasonable way to argue that the "before" poster is better designed.
Yes there is. More people think the left design is better, ergo it is reasonable to assume it is a better design.
The failure of the right design, and why people don't like it, even though the one on the left is a visual cacophony, is that it doesn't bring out the information people are interested in. It uses design principles to box them into an information hierarchy so you can find them, but that's an extra step it's introducing. You don't have to find the key information point in the left one because they're presented up front. A quick linear skim and you've gotten everything you need. You'll notice that all of the important information a person needs to know is visually distinct from the rest of the poster and larger on the left.
Here's what I need to know: what is this about? (Akido), when are classes I (a beginner) can take, how can I get in contact with this place?
The left answers this with a quick scan, the fact that the leading on the words "Beginner Class" is worse on the left is irrelevant, the information, which is all I want, is more prominent. It doesn't matter that there's a section called "Come Visit" on the right, I know what an address, phone number and URL look like on sight (automatically and instantly) and my context know that they'll be about the Akido school, and the left poster does a better job and making those elements larger, easier to read and more visually distinct.
In fact, I can recognize what a phone number looks like before I can even register what all the numbers that compose that phone number are. I can even find the number on the left poster in my peripheral vision somewhere around where my eye hits "Regular Classes" on the left. I have to both find the "Come Visit" section and get about halfway through it on the right poster before I can even register that there's a phone number on the poster at all!
To use an analogy, the left poster is a bright direction sign on a dark street. Immediately noticeable, visually distinct, clear call to action "come here to Akido!". The right poster is a library, well organized, guaranteed to contain key elements, but you need to navigate the organizational scheme to get what you want out of it.
The right design doesn't present information, it organizes it, and that's a failure for an advertisement poster.
Neither design is good, but the "before" design communicates nothing clearly, while the "after" at least rewards a glance with the knowledge that:
* there is a regular class schedule
* you can come visit without an appointment
That information is also in the "before" design, but you have to read carefully to find it.
The most important thing to understand design is that a good design has clear goals. The critiques I'm reading of the "after" design seem to be based on the idea that all the information in the poster is equally relevant; they ignore the goals of the poster --- by necessity, since the "before" poster objectively doesn't have a goal, which it deliberately demonstrates by not having any hierarchy.
If you don't care about the goals of the poster, you can just go with whether you like or dislike the thin black rules dividing it up, or whether you like big text or little text. But you're missing the point if you do that.