Your Guide to Font Sizes and Colour Combinations for Your Ideal Banner

Banners, such as PVC banners, pull up banners, personalised banners, and more – are one of the most useful tools you could possibly have to drum up business – they can attract attention from afar, ensure that many people see what you, your company, your brand and your business is all about, and since they are relatively cheap, they have an excellent return on investment. That is, of course, assuming that you design them properly.

When it comes to design, many things matter – space, colour, graphics, and lettering. However, font sizes and colour combinations seem to be the most underestimated ones. Your choice of letters really does have a great influence. Luckily, there are some guidelines that will surely lead to success. Here’s your guide to font sizes and colour combinations for your ideal banner.

Keep style to a minimum

It’s often tempting to go too creative and place a high regard on different kinds of fonts and styles for your lettering, but it’s often a mistake. Readers tend to get confused when there are too many curls and curves, and just want the message to be clear. Be bold and straightforward – have one font for the headline (bold) and another for the rest of the text. Two fonts are often more than enough.

Some simple rules: Helvetica and similar fonts are easy to read from a distance, Calibri or Times New Roman is perfect for the rest. Avoid Old English or Cursive.

Colour combinations

It’s all about combining and contrasting colours to make your message for your roller banners clear. Do your research – there are plenty of sites online that give you great hints. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different options. 

Size of letters

It’s a tricky question – and the answer should be found by asking another one: ‘How far are the people away from the banner?’ Roughly speaking (as a rule of thumb), take the expected distance from the banner to the crowd and divide that distance by 50 – that’s how large your letters should be. So, for a crowd that’s 20 metres away, you’ll want to use letters that are at least 0.2 metres high. At a minimum – mind you!

One more piece of advice – it’s an important one: banners need some ‘white space’. With this we mean that there needs to be some area located on the banner that has no particular design or message. It’s a matter of contrast. It’s common to stretch the letters so it reaches from left to right, but that’s a mistake. It’s common to make the margins small, but that’s a mistake. Your banner is a blank page – and some areas should remain blank; the printed area stands out more that way, as banner printing experts confirm. White space helps your reader focus on what’s important.

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