Design tips for pull up banners

Pull up banners are a very common marketing item for point of sale displays and business gatherings such as functions, events and trade shows, so the following design tips for pull up banners is very important.

With so many other businesses competiting against each other in these types of business gatherings, how do you design a pull up banner that stands out from the rest and attracts maximum attention?

Pull up banners, or retractable banners, are printed onto a synthetic material known as polypropylene and comes with a rear backing pole and a base with cross feet attached to it to make it a free standing object. They are extremely convenient, packing down into a neat carry bag via a retracting mechanism, and are very lightweight, which truly makes them the most ideal print item for transporting to business gatherings as mentioned above.

Lets now look at some design tips for pull up banners…

Why have pull up banners?

Inknition recommends having a very clear and direct reason for having a pull up banner before beginning the design phase. For example, is your rectractable banner intended to:

• Develop brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Generate leads
• Promote a single unique offer or deal

If you can pinpoint exactly which of the above 4 items you intend to target, this should allow you to come up with the most suitable plan for your design work.

Standard size or larger?

Inknition offers 3 sets sizes of pull up banners, standard size of 850mm wide x 2000mm tall, shopping centre approve size of 850mm wide x 1400mm tall and oversized at 1200mm wide x 2000mm tall.

You can find our print templates here

Minimalist is best!

This statement is probably true of all design work, but even more so on large format items such as pull up banners/retractable banners. You only have a very limited amount of time to attract someones attention, so be very simply, direct and to the point. Here are some design tips for pull up banners and keeping them simple:

• Minimise the amount of colour on your design. Go with a dark or light background colour and 1 or 2 complementary colours only
• Keep the text to a minimum and try to use bol san serif fonts
• Use large block of colour
• Use bold, high quality graphic elements that compliment your design

The Inknition pull up banner above is a great example of an extremely minimalist design with one purpose in mind, to get people to visit the website. The logo has also been rotated portrait to make it as large as possible on the pull up banner dimensions.

Place important content at the top of pull up banners

Information at the bottom section of retractable banners can be obscured by people, objects and other signage and displays, making this section of a pull up banner void. Things such as your logo and your main call out should be up the top half of the pull up banner display area.

Try splitting your message across multiple pull up banners

A powerful way to use a pull up banner is to place your message across multiple single banners. For example, a set of pull up banners that includes a main central banner, plus complementary pull up banners for other products or services your business may offer.

Another very cool method to create massive impact via pull up banners, is to use continuous graphical elements across the banners. They can be assembled and placed next to each like a jigsaw puzzle to create massive, expansive displays that tell a captivating story.

The use of text

Find a way to deliver your key message succinctly. If you have a cool tagline, this would be a good place to start. Long sentences should be shortened to just a few words only, this will allow these important key words to be as large as possible on the pull up banner. If you are doing to have dot points on your pull up banner, only include the most important ones, or create new, more general dot points to cover more of the services you offer.

Use a stuning image or graphic element

Every picture tells a thousand words. How can you get your message across using an image? If you have professional images of your service or product, perhaps there is one that would translate well to this vertical format. An abstract or incomplete image can also ignite people’s curiosity and desire to find out more.

A combination of photography and graphics can deliver an interesting effect, especially If you are using high quality stock images from a website such as shutterstock.

Don’t forget that Inknition has a graphic design team that can help bring your pull-up banner ideas to life.

Contact info@inknition.com.au to begin your design journey today.