4 Banner Design Tips You Need to Know

Designing your banner yourself? Want to make the biggest and best impact possible? These 4 tips will help get you on the road to success.

1. Leave the cheesy stock images at home

Let’s say that you’re advertising at a university employment fair. There, on your banner is a clean, attractive, 20 something male, smartly dressed, extending a handshake with a mega-watt smile. This kind of stock image has been done to death. Not only that, look around the university. Who are you appealing to? How any smart dressed, attractive young men do you see walking around? Unless your target audience has this exact idea in mind of who they want to be, then you’re failing to address them.

People want real. Whether you choose to hire a photographer for professional photos that really represent your brand, or choose stock images that are more “real life”, remember to keep your audience in mind at all times when choosing images for your portable banner.

2. Choose your colours wisely

There is a reason that designers are paid to do their jobs. Now, if you don’t have a designer on hand to make up your pull up banner, then you will need to design it carefully yourself. And this includes correct colouring. Unless you have an eye for colour (or even if you think you do!), then you would be wise to use tried and tested colour schemes for your banner.

Pick out the colour scheme from your website (if it has been professionally designed), or look online to find effective colour schemes that incorporate a few different colours.

3. Don’t include too much information

Watch out for the fine print! Or even better yet, don’t include it at all. Your retractable banner isn’t there to convey as much as possible, it’s just a chance to draw the eye, and as such draw people in. Stick with under 20 words (in various different font sizes) to convey your message as simply as possible.

For the full message, interested parties can chat to staff or use the call to action, which leads on to our next point.

4. Always have a call to action

“Let’s talk!” “www.yourbusinesshere.com” “Limited time offer”

These are all effective calls to action. A call to action will prompt the viewer to perform a particular task, whether it’s talking to staff, visiting a website, or purchasing a product. A banner should always have a way for the customer to interact with your brand emblazoned across it, otherwise it could well be a dead end.