5 Tips for High Impact Banner Design

Visual advertising is still a staple of the marketing world - and for a good reason! Strategically placed in densely trafficked areas, a well-designed banner or billboard will generate interest in your company while you sleep. With tangible benefits for your bottom line, it's essential to get this part of your marketing strategy right. 

Banner design is an artform in-and-of-itself, which uses specific tools to achieve precise goals: catching the public's eye, giving them relevant information about your product and engaging them in your story, all within highly limiting spatial restrictions — feeling a bit overwhelmed? Here are a few tips and tricks to help you nail your banner design! 

Do your homework: Target Market research

The key to a banner which attracts the right kind of attention is a design that is tailored to your target market. Inquiries into the values and priorities of your target demographic will enable you to advertise in ways that resonate with them. What colour schemes do they respond to most? What typeface? What kind of humour or authorial voice do they prefer? Being able to answer these questions means you have effectively put yourself in the shoes of your audience. 

Bright, Bold and Beautiful

Bright colours are more likely to catch the eye, and they tend to make a banner more memorable. To help your bright colours shine, try some bold colour blocking - placing clashing colours near each other in simple geometric shapes so that they help each other stand out. This has to be done carefully, or it could result in a headache, but the results are bold and beautiful, ensuring your brand's visibility. 

Word Play

The aim in banner design is to provide enough information so that the public can understand your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), in a simple, smart and memorable form. This often involves the use of short lines of text, wordplay and a catchy motto. The most critical factor in designing the textual element of your banner is to keep it short: don't overwhelm or bore readers with too much information. Make it snappy and stick to the point! Point being, of course, what makes you better than your market competitors.  

Design Aesthetic

Does your brand have a specific look, or aesthetic, that is associated with it? From colour schemes to typeface, everything you use to visually advertise yourself should say something distinctive about your company. Footloose and fancy-free? Warm colours and playful fonts are your friends. Efficient and professional? Bright, cool blues and greens and a simple, legible font are for you. Whatever your design aesthetic, it should carry over into your banner, so that this is but an extension of your visual signature. 

Less is More

When playing with colours and fonts, the temptation to fill every space with as much as possible can be quite strong. However, negative space is your friend, and leaving certain areas blank will help the rest of the design stand out.