Considerations when Picking a Font for a Banner

When choosing a banner font, there are a lot of things to consider. For the purpose of this article, we will be focusing on Legibility, Level of Professionalism, and Compatibility.

When choosing a font to use for an email or essay, it is difficult to go wrong, so long as the font isn’t a symbol font like Wingdings. On banners, however, legibility can be an issue. When a font is used in a large scale format, the thinner fonts are going to have issues. Thin lines that make up different parts of the letters may disappear at a distance. For this reason you may want to go with something that has a heavier stroke. It doesn’t necessarily need to be bold, but if you are using a thinner type, sometimes making it bold will eliminate visibility issues that could have arisen otherwise. Script fonts, while very ornate, are usually not a strong choice for legibility. They are fine for very large words that may span the entirety of the banner but for smaller copy usually won’t work very well.

Another concern that you should be aware of when choosing your typeface is the level of professionalism you want to express. A serif font is usually considered a more formal font and sans serif a little bit lighter toned, but there are obviously exceptions to this rule. If you are going for a more playful banner but still want to have a professional feel, many people opt for Comic Sans. Please don’t make this same mistake. Comic Sans is a font that lacks any professionalism at all. It is better to reserve Comic Sans for kids’ banners only. A better font for banners to use, instead of Comic Sans, would be something like Chianti or along those similar lines.

Finally, compatibility is a problem that may occur where you chose to use a font that you downloaded and your banner company does not have a copy. If this is true, there are ways around the problem. You can send the font to the printer, or if you are using a design software you can change the font to outlines. Issues with converting the fonts to outlines may occur in that if there are mistakes with your text or want to change something, once the font has been converted to outlines the printer cannot make these changes. However, most banner printers have a large library of fonts to choose from and most times will not have any problems with compatibility with their software.

I hope this will help in choosing your banner font. Next time we will be providing advice on how to choose the right size for your banner.