The only properly legible text is 'aitp'. Is there a branding guide for the logo, because most companies don't want you manipulating the logo as much as you did. If you decide to leave the overlay on the logo, tone down the blue, because it's the only blue of that color in the document and it looks off. Turn the outer glow on the bottom text from white screen to black multiply to help it pop more. The black background, white glow, and purple text looks muddy. The aitp logo text overlapping the circle logo text looks bad and loses legibility.
Take the time to recreate the circle logo if you don't have a vector file, because it looks pixelated/blurry. It's only circles and text, so it shouldn't take very long if you have illustrator. White text on yellow/orange is one of the least legible color combinations possible, so I would darken part of the sky and add a dark outer glow to the logo. Also, I want to make sure you didn't rasterize any text to apply a sharpen. If so, undo it. Sharpening is intentionally pixelating, which should only be used on signatures, not 300 resolution printed pieces. If you insist on enhancing the edges, then try out unsharp mask at the very end of the process and make sure it's not permanent (50-100 amount, 2-4 radius, 5 threshold works with most images). Use ctrl+shift+alt+E/apple+shift+option+E to create a merged image layer without ruining the layers below. Ideally the poster would've been created in illustrator and had some raster images brought in, then have some clipping masks if necessary, but that's just my preference.
The hierarchy is off. Normally posters promote their message and leave a small logo in a bottom corner. 'Transporting IT Professionals Into the Future' seems like it should be huge text. Also, I would enlarge 'Into the Future' to help balance your offset. It should probably take up the same horizontal width as the first line, plus it would add even more emphasis to the words, which you're obviously trying to do with the purple texture.
I would recreate the skyline to not only use straight lines, but make sure they're perfectly vertical/horizontal. Hold the shift key to maintain the correct angle. The imperfections are going to be really visible at that size.
Remove the black border entirely or enlarge it to be at least 1 inch thick. The cutter isn't going to leave you with a perfect cut, especially at that size, so you'll notice the imperfections if the cut isn't parallel with your border. If you decide to enlarge it, remove the smaller, inner strokes..it's too subtle to be warranted and gets lost or looks blurry the further away you are.
I'm assuming the illustration of the guy is a stock image? I would take some time to either make another illustration that goes better with the style of the bird or at least alter the guy. Use the same black stroke and thickness of the bird to outline the guy, plus use the same black, white, and yellow color palette as the bird.
The rays from the sun look weird since they're not perfect circles radiating from a focal point. I think it would be easier to create the circles in illustrator.
Most of the poster is orange, so you might benefit from adding in some complimentary blue. You could swap out the black space for blue or have a blue gradient start at the skyline and fade down into black. Or turn the orange more yellowish to match the bird's colors. Also, the yellow in the space area doesn't match the yellow up top. It looks more neon/green.
Edit: I just googled MWSU and it looks like you removed the actual bird from the seal to place in the mascot illustration. It also appears you skewed the bird, which looks really bad now that I see it. Were you specifically requested to use the seal, rather than their traditional logo, because it would really help your composition if you didn't have to use it? Instead having the MWSU logo at the bottom with the aitp logo would look a lot better. I also realized your poster doesn't actually have much gold that matches the schools colors, but rather other variations of brighter yellows.
This post was edited by ericswanson_19 on Mar 31 2016 08:09am