Last updated on March 2nd, 2022 at 04:54 pm
Banners make excellent marketing materials as they can be used for a variety of purposes, and they stand out and draw attention. From advertising at your brick and mortar store to highlighting your company’s services at trade shows and other events, banners are a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness and fuel sales. Here are a few tips on how to a design banner that’s memorable.
Develop a targeted promotion or message
When figuring out how to design a banner, ask yourself a few questions to narrow down what you want your message to be. What does your business do to help make your customers’ lives easier or solve a problem for them? This should be the center of your message. What is it that you want your audience to do when they see your banner? Call you? Visit your website or your physical store? Make sure you include a single call to action. When crafting your message, try to keep it as short and simple as possible while still getting your message across. You have limited space on a banner, so you want to make sure you only include what is necessary. When your goal is for them to visit your website, include your website address but not your physical location. If it isn’t necessary, don’t include it.
If your company sponsors local events or makes frequent appearances at events or trade shows, consider printing a standard banner that can be reused across events. Banners are made with quality materials, meaning you can use them over and over without worrying that they will rip while being taken down. Talk about cost-effective.
Make it memorable
The most crucial aspect of how to design a banner is to make it striking and memorable.Many people may not give your banner more than a passing glance so you want to make sure you leave an impression. When you’re trying to design your own banner, do your best to make it stand out. Whether someone is driving by your banner or at an event, there are a lot of things competing for their attention. Rhymes and jokes or a funny image all work exceptionally well to get people to remember your banner. I can’t recall every banner I have ever seen, but I have several pictures on my camera roll of some funny ones I have encountered, and I would consider that a win for that business’s marketing effort. A catchy phrase is key to a memorable banner design.
Brand consistency
Once you have your message established, you can move on to the fun part: designing. However, it isn’t just about choosing any design. An important consideration is how to make your own banner consistent with your brand’s identity.
It’s important to keep your brand in mind when choosing visual elements for your designs, such as colors, a logo, fonts, and images. This banner is tied to your business so you want to make sure you paint an accurate picture of your brand to maintain consistency with your customers. Designing something drastically different on a banner than your website can make it difficult for people to recognize you as the same company as the website they visited online. Brand consistency is key to developing trust and loyalty with your audience. The colors, fonts, and other visual elements you use on your banner should match what you have used in other mediums and marketing materials tied to your business.
Pro tip on how to design a banner: choose fonts that are easy to read, big enough to be read from distances, and a color that stands out against the background.
A popular “rule” to help determine the proper text size for your banner is to make your font at least one inch tall (72 pt.) for every 10 feet of viewing distance. For example, if you want your banner to be viewed from a maximum of 100 feet away, you want to make your font 3 inches tall (216 pt.) at the very smallest. Keep in mind that the best legibility distance for 216 point font is not going to be 100 feet, but 30 feet. Some commonly used font sizes for banners are 1.5 inches tall (108 pt.), 2 inches tall (144 pt.), 5 inches tall (360 pt.), 12 inches tall (864 pt.), and 15 inches tall (1080 pt.).
Consider the placement of your banner
There are a couple of ways to target the placement of your banner, each of which depends on your goal. You can choose your placement to achieve maximum viewership, or you can place them to reach a specific audience. If you decide to place your banner in highly trafficked areas, you may not reach your target audience, but you can increase brand awareness, and at least some of the people exposed to your banner will likely be new customers. If you choose to advertise at niche events or trade shows, you may not reach as many people, but those you do reach are already interested in your product or services.
How to Make Banners: Tips
Printivity offers a variety of printing options and can print banners from as small as 1’ x 1’ to as large as 16’ x 140’. Consider the location of your banner to determine the best size. Bigger is not always better, so keep in mind if you are working with limited space.
Banners can be used both indoors and outdoors. If you are planning on hanging your banner outdoors, carefully consider your material. 18 oz heavy-duty vinyl is ideal for outdoor use as it can withstand various weather elements. Banners used indoors will not be subject to as much wear and tear, but keep in mind how often you will have to put it up and take it down. You can also choose to have grommets for easy installation. Printivity offers printing with no grommets, grommets on four corners, grommets on all sides (every 1-2 feet), grommets on the top and bottom (every 1-2 feet), or grommets on the left and right (Every 1-2 feet.)
If you use a special font that our system can not recognize, the document will replace your font with another font in our system. We recommend saving your final file as a flattened PDF, the preferred file format, though we also support file formats of DOC, JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIFF, AL, PSD, PUB, and PPT.
Get started!
Now, if you’re thinking, “how do I make a banner if this is my first time?” we’ve got you covered. Download free banner templates directly from Printivity.com before you start designing. Printivity templates have all the information you need to create a print-ready file. Once you’re ready to order, or have questions during the ordering process, contact our expert customer service department at 1-877-649-5463.
