Printed banners need to communicate information quickly, to catch the attention of passers-by. While digital advertising seems to inundate our lives, print media still makes a huge impact as one of the most effective ways to advertise your brand. Printed banners, like billboards, might be the first glimpse consumers get of your business, while waiting for buses or entering subway stations, or passing by your banner ads, when commuting to and from work each day.

According to Marketing Sherpa, 82% of consumers trust print ads more when it comes to making purchasing decisions, illustrating that eye-catching print banners, like print ads, can instill trust in your brand and raise conversion rates. In this article, we explore ten ways to improve the design of your banners to attract more attention to your business. 

1—Define the reason you need a banner

Versatile, printed banners can serve many purposes, including:

• Boosting brand awareness
• Advertising products or services
• Introducing your brand or as a rebranding measure when your brand changes or outgrows its current image
• Announcing upcoming events
• Raising awareness of causes

Knowing your purpose will help develop your banner’s design and determine how to use different elements to achieve optimal results. 

2—Choose the right material for your banner

Generally, banners fall into three categories, according to the material used:

• Fabric for indoor banners and displays
• Vinyl for outdoor banners due to their durability
• Mesh for outdoor displays, especially in windy areas but these are not totally opaque, so attention to color choice and saturation is important. Once you choose the type of material for your banner, you will want to decide on an installation type that works with your location and purpose.  

3—As to installation types, print banners are classified as:

• Pole banners
• Feather and teardrop flags
• Suspended banners
• Retractable banners
• Pop-up displays

Your initial printed banner design may need revising, depending on the chosen installation, the lighting you choose, the environment surrounding your banner and many other factors. Signarama’s expert design specialists can help you check all the boxes on your banner design checklist. One of these boxes involves using the right images in your banner design.

4—Use relevant, high-quality images

The photos you use in your banners should be essential to your banner’s design. Relevant images create impact for your banner’s message, conveying info that viewers make a mental note of and often respond to. Developing a photo file of relevant images is a great asset but if that’s not in your wheelhouse, you can sign up to use stock photo sources in your banners instead. Using your own product images that let consumers know what your company sells can make for exciting promotional sales banners. Using seasonal images for promotional sales will get your customers’ attention. Beside including the right photos, your banners could incorporate graphic elements, as well.

5—Incorporate graphic elements and symbols

While you don’t want your banner to contain too many visual elements, your logo, a mascot, and/or any other custom characters that are associated with your brand can be used to expand brand awareness and promote sales. Arrows, rectangles, swirls, and other geometric elements can be used to create motion in your banners, drawing viewers’ eyes to your banner. Corporate colors can be used in your banners, but the background colors you use depend on where your banner will be installed.

6—Taking care with color choices

In banner design, colors are perhaps the most important element of your banner that can either make or break the success of your project. Determining where and how your banner will be mounted will determine the color palette that works the best to capture your audience’s attention. Before finalizing your outdoor banner project’s design, placing a scaled mockup in an image of the surrounding area where your banner will be installed can reveal whether your banner will stand out from its surroundings or blend into the background. Once you know what your banner’s background will be, you can determine the contrasting colors that will make your banner stand out from the trees, the sky, or from other signs in your immediate area. Vibrant colors usually work better than pastels to capture viewers’ attention. Bold text colors that contrast with your background work together to turn heads and get your banner noticed. Another box to check revolves around text.

7—Using text and formatting

Your banner should act as a preview of your banner’s message but not contain all the information about your brand or your promotion you’re advertising. Limiting your banner’s text to your business’ name, tagline, contact information, and a clear call-to-action keeps your banner from looking cluttered, with too much information to digest in a short period of time you must make an impression on passers-by. Your banner should tell your customers the purpose of your ad, and what they should do next. For your text to convey your message from a distance, choosing the right fonts is crucial.

8—Fonts are fundamental

Along with formatting your text, choosing fonts that are easy to read at a distance will boost the efficacy of your banners. When choosing fonts that work with the style of your banner, options abound. Both serif and non-serif font families are in the running, but opting for font families with clean, medium, or bold strokes, minus fanciful, elaborate script, with detailed, thin lines are easier to print and read, such as:

• Ariel
• Roboto
• Calibri
• Cambria
• Impact
• Garamond

Printed banners need to read well from a distance to attract a larger audience, as consumers won’t usually make the effort to get closer to your banner to try to read it, so getting viewers’ attention from a distance might be your only shot at getting their attention. You can also boost your readability, so that customers can read your banners from both sides.

9—Double-sided printing

For banners that are installed with front and back visibility, double-sided printing options are a good way to get more exposure for your banners. Double-sided printing works well with vinyl banners, such as retractable banners for trade show exhibits, conference halls, malls, shops, and other locations. Finally, connecting your banner to your digital presence is critical.

10—Linking to your digital marketing

Creating a consistent message across both your print and digital media strengthens your brand, so that it feels familiar to shoppers. Your print and digital channels work better together to create and bolster brand recognition. In the digital age of advertising, your contact info will include social media handles and links to your website or a QR code that, when scanned will link to your website or your ecommerce site, for example.

Printed banners allow businesses to create eye-catching mini billboards that promote brand recognition, announce sales, raise awareness for social causes and for many other uses, as one of the most affordable and effective marketing tools on the market. Signarama is your one-stop-shop for everything you need to help you grow your business and increase your bottom line with printed banners!