Tips for Designing the Perfect Banner
Modern Americans are bombarded with advertisements whenever they watch TV, go online and, yes, get in the car or head out for a walk. Getting and keeping their attention can thus be viewed as a serious challenge. Eye-catching, well-designed banners are a wonderful way to meet that challenge. Read on to find some tips for how to design a banner that will get plenty of attention, even in today’s ad-saturated world.
1. Start by Defining the Banner’s Purpose
Before looking into Banner Printing or brainstorming ideas, banner designers should take a moment to define their purposes. Knowing what the banner is meant to achieve will make the design process easier, so try to be specific. Common reasons for ordering banners can include:
- Raising brand awareness or rebranding
- Highlighting products
- Promoting events
- Increasing awareness for social causes
- Drawing attention to sales or promotions
- And more
Some banners are meant to be hung for the duration of long events, while others are temporary. Either way, the banner’s design should be directly informed by its general purpose or purposes.
2. Choose Colors Wisely
Banners need to stand out from their surroundings so that people notice them, but that’s not the only factor that should inform a designer’s color choice. In cases where the primary purpose of the banner will be to improve brand awareness, the brand’s color scheme should be taken into account, for example. If that’s not the primary goal, try to consider things like cultural associations and the psychology of color.
3. Keep Text Concise and Readable
No matter what a banner’s underlying purpose may be, it should get the message across quickly and directly. Most people won’t stop reading long blocks of text, even if the banner is hung in a location that targets pedestrians rather than vehicular traffic. They’ll glance at the banner for a few seconds, then move on.
Most expert designers recommend incorporating no more than 15 words of large, easy-to-read text and conveying the rest of the message using images. To ensure that the text is readable from a distance, be sure to choose classic fonts, and follow the 10:100 ratio, which dictates that letter height needs to be 10″ for every 100 feet of viewing distance.
4. Use High-Quality Images
It doesn’t matter whether the banner will feature photographs or graphic art. The images need to be of an extremely high quality to avoid looking blurry or grainy on the banner. It’s difficult to tell what a tiny image on a computer screen will look like when it’s blown up to hundreds of times its size or more.
Saving graphics as vector files is helpful because it will ensure that the image will look the same when it’s enlarged. For photographs and any kind of raster image, aim for an output resolution of at least 100 to 200 DPI at full image size.
Find a Quality Printer
Once business owners have designed the perfect banners, they need to find printers capable of providing quality products. Take the time to look into different options before choosing a printing company and don’t settle for less than the best.