A pull-up banner has about three seconds to work, from roughly three metres away, while somebody walks past it. Design for that, and everything else follows.
KNOW WHERE THE EYES ACTUALLY LAND
A standard banner is about 2 metres tall and 850mm wide. The part people see is the top third, roughly between 1.2 and 2 metres off the ground.
Put your headline and logo there. The bottom 300mm is routinely hidden behind a table, a plant or a person, so never put anything essential in it.
ONE MESSAGE, SIX WORDS
The most common mistake is treating a banner as a brochure. If you have five messages, you need five banners or a different medium.
Pick the single most compelling thing you do and say it in as few words as possible, in text large enough to read across a room.
SIZE THE TEXT PROPERLY
- Headline: 150mm tall or more, readable from five metres
- Supporting line: around 50 to 70mm
- Contact details: no smaller than 25mm, and they only need to be readable up close
If you are unsure, print the design on A4, hold it at arm’s length and squint. Roughly what you can still read is what will work on the banner.
CONTRAST DOES THE HEAVY LIFTING
Dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background. Avoid text sitting on a busy photograph without a solid panel behind it.
Also consider the room. A white banner in a white marquee disappears. Know your venue if you can.
LEAVE SPACE EMPTY
Crowded banners read as noise and get skipped. Generous margins and clear gaps make the message land faster, which is the entire point.
GIVE PEOPLE ONE THING TO DO
A website, a WhatsApp number or a QR code. One, not four. A banner with no call to action is decoration.
THE TECHNICAL SIDE
- Set up at the correct finished size, allowing roughly 50mm extra at the bottom that rolls into the base
- 150dpi at full size is fine for large format, because of normal viewing distance
- Supply a CMYK PDF with fonts outlined
- Keep important content at least 40mm from the side edges
- Choose a matt finish for venues with strong overhead lighting, as gloss glares
BUY THE BETTER BASE
The print is rarely what fails. It is the mechanism. A wide, heavy base with a decent spring and a solid pole will outlast several cheap units, and it will not fall over at the one event that mattered.
THINK AHEAD TO THE NEXT EVENT
Leave the date off, and put anything that changes on a second, cheaper banner. A well designed generic banner should still be usable in three years.
Have a look at our display and event branding range, or send us your artwork and we will check it before it prints.