Vinyl banners colour & size are important

To get the most impact from your vinyl banner, you not only have to consider the size of the font (the character size) you use. Proper use of colours is also vitally important to the overall effect.

New vinyl banner buyers will often concentrate on making their new banner look nice. Now this is certainly very important, though keep in mind the main purpose of your banner is to deliver your message.

Company colours of course have to be taken into account, though if your message gets lost because of your company colour considerations there is no point in having a vinyl banner to promote your business or organization in the first place.
One of the most important factors in choosing good colours for your vinyl banner is contrast. The colours with the highest level of contrast (no surprise here) are black and white. I know that these are not really colours in the true sense but lets not get side tracked.

Black text on a white background is usually the best, though white on black is also OK if you have some degree of back lighting. White on black for instance is fine for ads on your computer monitor.

The reason we don’t see much black and white used for advertising purposes in the real world (apart from news print) is mainly because it is boring. Think of the last newspaper you read, your eyes usually gravitate towards the coloured ads, not the black and white.

That said, this does not mean that we should use all the colours of the rainbow either. Ideally what we are looking for is a combination of high contrast, eye catchability (yes, I just made up that word), as well as something that is easy for us to digest visually.

The simple answer here is yellow background and black text. This combination answers the contrast question, yellow and black demonstrates about 70% of the contrast of black and white while at the same time offering an eye catching space to look at that is also easy to read.

Have a look at the example image included with this post, examine it from several different distances and see which colour combinations are the easiest for you to read.

There are certain situations where you have no choice with the colours you have to use on your vinyl banner. In some instances we can cheat a little by adding a fine black border to the banner text we use.

This increases the contrast around the text as well as helping our eyes to separate the text from the background. This technique is used when the overall contrast is low. Have a look at the sales banners and business banners in the b2bjv.com website. You will see I have used this method on many of the banners to improve there legibility.

If you have any questions about this feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I will be happy to help you.

Cheers

Steve