How Big Should the Sign Be?
The most common problem with signage is not the design. It is that the text is too small to read from where people actually are. There is a rule of thumb for this and it is worth thirty seconds.
The rule
Allow one inch of letter height for every 10 feet your sign will be read from. That is the distance where it has its full impact. The same letters can still be made out from three to four times farther away, but only just, and only by someone already looking for them.
For a sign read from a moving car, time matters as much as distance: the table shows about how long a driver can read each letter height before passing it.
| Letter height | Best from | Readable up to | Seconds to read at 45 mph | At 60 mph |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3" | 30 ft | 100 ft | 1.5 | 1.1 |
| 4" | 40 ft | 150 ft | 2.3 | 1.7 |
| 6" | 60 ft | 200 ft | 3.0 | 2.3 |
| 8" | 80 ft | 350 ft | 5.3 | 4.0 |
| 9" | 90 ft | 400 ft | 6.1 | 4.5 |
| 10" | 100 ft | 450 ft | 6.8 | 5.1 |
| 12" | 120 ft | 525 ft | 8.0 | 6.0 |
| 15" | 150 ft | 630 ft | 9.6 | 7.2 |
| 18" | 180 ft | 750 ft | 11.4 | 8.5 |
| 24" | 240 ft | 1,000 ft | 15.2 | 11.4 |
| 30" | 300 ft | 1,250 ft | 18.9 | 14.2 |
| 36" | 360 ft | 1,500 ft | 22.7 | 17.0 |
| 42" | 420 ft | 1,750 ft | 26.5 | 19.9 |
| 48" | 480 ft | 2,000 ft | 30.3 | 22.7 |
For bold block letters such as Helvetica Bold. Thin or script fonts need to be bigger. Red or black on white or yellow reads farthest; low contrast (gray on white, navy on black) shortens every distance in the table. Chart data: FSGS letter visibility chart.
Work backwards from that. If your banner needs to be read from across a parking lot at about 100 feet, your headline needs 10 inch letters, which sets the size of the banner far more than any aesthetic decision. A yard sign by the road, read by drivers at 45 mph, wants 4 to 6 inch letters for its one or two key words.
Fewer words, bigger words
The instinct is to fit everything on. Resist it. A sign read at distance gets about three seconds and roughly seven words. Name, one offer, one way to respond. Everything else belongs on your website, and the phone number only needs to be there if you actually want calls.
Standard sizes, and why they matter
Yard signs are 18" × 24" or 12" × 18" because that is what fits standard H-stakes and what the material yields efficiently. Banners are cut to any size up to 120" on one side and 95 feet on the other, but common sizes exist for a reason:
- 2' × 4': indoor, behind a table, event signage
- 3' × 6': the workhorse. Fence, building front, grand opening
- 4' × 8': road frontage, read from a moving car
- 3' × 8'+ in mesh: anything on a fence in an exposed spot
Wind is the thing people forget
A solid vinyl banner on a fence is a sail. In an exposed position it will either tear or take the fence with it. Two fixes: mesh, which lets wind through, or wind slits cut into solid vinyl. Both are cheap and both are much cheaper than replacing the banner in March.
Material, briefly
13 oz vinyl is the standard and it is fine for most jobs. 15 oz is heavier with better opacity, worth it if light behind the banner is washing out your colors. 18 oz is for long-term outdoor and high wind, and it is the only material we print double-sided, because the lighter ones show through. Mesh is for fences.
Double-sided, or two banners?
If people approach from both directions, double-sided 18 oz is one banner priced at $9.00 a square foot. If the two sides are in genuinely different places, two single-sided banners at $4.50 are usually cheaper. Worth thinking about for thirty seconds before you order.
Ready to price it?
Everything in this guide is built into the builders. They will do the math for you and show a real number.
Size and price a banner