Almost every banner that comes back for a reprint comes back for the same reason. The artwork looked great at 100% on a laptop, and then it went up on a fence and nobody could read it from the sidewalk.
Here is the rule we use before anything goes on the roll.
One inch of cap height for every ten feet of viewing distance
Cap height is the height of a capital letter, not the height of the whole line. If people will be reading your banner from across a two-lane road — call it forty feet — your headline needs roughly four inches of cap height.
On a 4ft x 2ft banner, four inches is a sixth of the total height. Once you allow for margins, that usually means the headline is the only thing on there, and that is fine. A banner is not a brochure.
A banner with one word people can read beats a banner with a paragraph nobody slows down for.
Rough guide, assuming a clear line of sight:
- 10 ft — sidewalk, shop door: 1″ caps
- 25 ft — across a parking lot: 2.5″ caps
- 40 ft — across a two-lane road: 4″ caps
- 75 ft — highway frontage, slow traffic: 7″+ caps
What goes in the space that is left
Order of priority, every time:
- The offer or the event. GRAND OPENING. 50% OFF. NOW HIRING. One idea.
- How to act on it. Usually a phone number, and it should be the second biggest thing on the banner.
- Who you are. Your logo earns recognition, but it does not close the sale. Keep it small.
Everything else — your website, your social handles, your full address, your hours — belongs on the door, not on a banner someone reads for two seconds at 30mph.
Three things that quietly ruin a good layout
Not leaving room for the hems and grommets. A hem folds about an inch of material back on each edge, and grommets sit inside that. Anything within an inch of the edge is at risk. Keep text at least two inches in.
Thin type and thin outlines. A hairline stroke that looks crisp on screen turns into a smudge at four feet wide. Go heavier than feels right.
Low contrast. Yellow on white and mid-grey on black both die in daylight. Dark type on a light panel, or light type on a dark panel, and nothing in between.
Send the copy, not the layout
If you are not sure, do not spend an evening fighting with it. Send us the words, tell us where the banner is going and how far away people will be standing, and we will lay it out free with your quote — at actual size, so you can see the real thing before it prints.
Banners are $6 per square foot with hems and grommets included. You can price your size in about ten seconds, or send us the details and we will come back the same day.