How to prepare artwork for banner printing

A banner has a hard job. It is read in seconds, from metres away, by people who were not looking for it — often while they are walking or driving past. Most of what makes a banner work is decided long before it reaches the printer, in the artwork file. Get the file right and the print will be sharp, the colours close to what you expected, and the message readable from where it matters.

This guide covers the things printers most often have to ask customers to fix: size, resolution, colour, text size, fonts and file format. None of it needs expensive software — just a little care before you press export.

Start with the right size, bleed and safe area

Before you place a single element, confirm the finished size of the banner: width, height and which way round it will hang. Set up your document at that size, or at an exact scale agreed with your printer. For very large pieces, some designers work at 1:10 — a 3 × 1 m banner built as 300 × 100 mm — and raise the image resolution tenfold to compensate. If you do this, say so clearly when you send the file.

Then add bleed: extra background that runs past the edge of the design, so there is no white sliver if the trim or hem is slightly off. Small print commonly uses 3 mm; large-format work often needs more, depending on how the banner will be finished. Your printer will tell you the figure they need.

Finally, mark a safe area. Hems, eyelets and frames all eat into the edges of a banner, so keep text, logos and phone numbers well inside the border. Around 5 cm is a sensible starting margin for a hemmed banner with eyelets — again, confirm it for your job.

Judge resolution at the final size

Resolution only means something at the size the image will be printed. A photo that looks crisp on your phone might be 1,000 pixels wide. Stretch it across a 3-metre banner and you are printing at under 10 pixels per inch — it will look soft and blocky from any distance.

Large-format print is viewed from further away than a brochure, so it does not need the 300 ppi usually quoted for close-up print. As a rule of thumb, 100–150 ppi at final size is plenty for most banners seen from a few metres, and very large pieces viewed from across a street can go lower. For a 3 m banner at 100 ppi, that is roughly 11,800 pixels across.

• Use the original photo file, not one saved from WhatsApp or social media — both compress images heavily.
• Don’t enlarge a small image and expect detail to appear. Upscaling adds pixels, not sharpness.
• Keep logos and text as vector artwork, which stays sharp at any size.

Get colour right: CMYK, brand colours and rich black

Your screen mixes light in red, green and blue (RGB). A printer lays down ink, usually cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). Some bright screen colours — electric blues, vivid greens, neon oranges — simply cannot be reproduced in ink, and will print duller than they look on screen.

Set up your artwork in CMYK from the start, or convert it before export and check how the colours shift. If your printer supplies a colour profile, use it. For brand colours, give CMYK values rather than trusting a screenshot, and if colour is critical, ask for a printed proof — no two screens show colour the same way.

Large areas of black deserve special attention. Black ink on its own can look slightly flat across a big solid area, so designers often use a rich black that adds some cyan, magenta and yellow underneath. Ask your printer which rich black they prefer, because too much ink in total can cause drying problems on some materials. Keep small text in plain black so it stays crisp.

Size your text for the viewing distance

Most banners fail on legibility, not colour. Passers-by give a banner about three seconds — the so-called three-second rule — so the main message has to be read at a glance, from wherever people actually stand or drive.

A banner is read in seconds, from metres away, by people who were not looking for it.

A widely used rule of thumb is about 2.5 cm of letter height for every 3 metres of viewing distance (1 inch per 10 feet). Treat the figures below as a starting point for your headline, not a hard limit: smaller text can still be legible, just not at a glance.

Height is only half of it. Strong contrast — dark on light, or light on dark — helps more than any colour choice, and bold or medium weights read better than thin ones. Decorative script fonts are hard to read at distance, so save them for a single word, if at all. And say less: one headline, one supporting line and one clear way to contact you usually does more than a banner that tries to list everything.

Outline or embed your fonts

If the printer does not have the exact font you used, their software will substitute another — and a careful layout can reflow or break. Avoid this by converting text to outlines (sometimes called “curves”) before export, or by embedding the fonts in a PDF. Keep an editable copy with live text, because outlined text cannot be corrected later.

While you are there, proofread. Ask someone else to check spellings, the phone number and any dates. Reprints caused by typing errors are the most avoidable kind.

Choose the right file format

A print-ready PDF is the safest choice for most printers: it keeps your layout, fonts, images and bleed together in one file. Many printers ask for a PDF/X standard such as PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4 — if your software offers them, use the one your printer requests.

• Print-ready PDF — the preferred format for finished artwork.
• AI, EPS or SVG — vector files, ideal for logos and simple graphic layouts.
• TIFF or maximum-quality JPEG — for photo-led designs, at the resolution discussed above.
• Avoid screenshots, images copied from websites, and Word or PowerPoint files where you can. They can be used, but usually need to be rebuilt first.

Name the file so it cannot be confused with an earlier draft — for example, shopfront-banner_300x100cm_v3.pdf.

A pre-flight checklist

Run through this list before you send anything to print:

• The document is the finished size, or an agreed scale, in the right orientation.
• Bleed is added on every side, to your printer’s specification.
• Text, logos and contact details sit inside the safe area, clear of hems and eyelets.
• Images are at least 100 ppi at final size, or as your printer advises.
• The colour mode is CMYK, and brand colours have CMYK values.
• Large black areas use your printer’s rich black; small text is plain black.
• The headline is readable at the real viewing distance.
• Fonts are outlined or embedded.
• Spelling, phone numbers and dates have been checked by a second person.
• The file is a print-ready PDF with a clear name and version number.

If you would like a second pair of eyes on your file, or you don’t have artwork yet, our Flex & Banner Printing service can design it to size as well as print it. We’ll confirm the size, material and finishing with you when you order.