Just taking a quick glance, the first thing I'd do is get rid of the second horizontal rule after the dates.

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GRAHAM SYDNEY
FREE---------

Graham Sydney: Life & Vision
Meet at the front desk / 6 pm
------------- <-this one isn't necessary at all and adds a lot of visual clutter.

Also, the titles' sizes change (like from COLIN McCAHON to ART IN THE MORNING) which adds a little bit of clutter as well. They should all the the same size.

The type in the top left box still needs a bit of adjusting. If you're going to have such huge line breaks and have the horizontal rules coming across, they should both have the same amount of buffer room on the type (the thicker one is too close to the type.)

Lastly, I think the photo may be a bit too dark. It's hard to see anything there.

An experiment: not sure how it will look, but try aligning columns 2 and 6 to the bottom. It may be effective, but also might look horrible. Give it a shot!

On the plus, the hierarchy is good, the colors look great, and everything seems to be well organized.

Hi Steve,

Thanks heaps for your comments, you're a legend!

So here are the changes as per your suggestions, it wont seem to let me upload a PDF, so a JPEG will have to do. Just one other thought I had - whats the general consensus on using hyphens in the copy?

Thanks again Steve - your comments were a big help!

- M.

Looking much better, well done!

Hyphens don't really bother me all that much. For me reading isn't hindered, except for two cases: when there are two hyphenated lines consecutively (looks bad having lots of lines end with -), and when a hyphenated word's other half is on a new column or new page. I always avoid those, as they are a bit tacky.

As for the poster: the only things I notice now are some of the line lengths seem a bit varied. GRAHAM SYDNEY's copy below it flows well, as it appears to end around the same vertical point, where POOR RACER's copy seems to come way too close to the next column. Maybe try dropping those back a little bit? The other thing I notice is instead (for columns 2 and 6) of aligning them to the bottom, just align the dates (as in "13 WEDNESDAY" and "17 SUNDAY" being on the same horizontal line.) That way the last column won't stick out as awkwardly.

It's definitely coming together! The overall grid/unity has greatly increased since the last draft.