Best fonts for banners
Choosing a banner font can be tricky. Designing a banner is a little different than writing a letter or an email. In many cases, drivers will be flying by your banner, so you have to simplify everything and make it very easy to read. Here are some of the all-time best fonts for banners, and the reasons why they work so well.
Arial Black is one of the most common fonts to use on a banner. It’s plain, basic block lettering, and it’s very easy to read. If you have a lot of words or letters to fit on a small banner, it might not work as well as…
Impact. This is a very bold block lettering font, but it is much narrower left to right than Arial Black. It’s still one of the best fonts for banners, but it lets you squeeze a little more information onto your banner.
Balloon is great for parties. It’s still got very bold letters, but it has a more playful look. Try to reserve this font for celebrations or banners for children.
Cooper Black is a good compromise between friendly and professional, so it works well for a small business banner font. It’s got very big bold letters like Arial Black, but it’s more rounded.
Garamond and Times New Roman are good if you have several lines of less important text on your banner. Try to use a bolder banner font for your headline, then use these fonts for the less-important details.
Cancun is another very big, bold font that’s good for banner headlines. It only allows you to type in uppercase, so reserve it for short words or phrases. It has a tropical beachy feel that’s good for celebrations or sale banners.
Worst fonts for banners
Comic Sans – unless you’re targeting children, this is an overused font that reminds many people of Beanie Babies. Especially avoid this font if you’re using it for a business that has nothing to do with children. For a daycare, it’s fine… for a jewelry company, it’s too childish. Look for something more refined, like Trajan or Brush Script.
Script Fonts – this describes a whole group of fonts that should not be used on banners. Script fonts look like cursive handwriting or like blackletter calligraphy – what you would expect to find at the Renaissance Festival. They are very hard to read. Keep in mind that although you may be able to read your company’s name quite easily, people glancing at the name for the very first time may struggle to figure out what the letters say unless you use a simpler font.
Papyrus – this font looks great when you use it for letterhead, but the problem is once it’s enlarged to a huge size and printed on a banner, you’ll see all the imperfections, so it’s not a good banner font. For an example, just type something in Microsoft Word using this font, and use a font size of 200 or zoom in very close. You’ll see that the edges are actually very jagged, and that makes it hard to read. If you decide to use this font on a banner, just keep in mind it will be hard to read, so you should definitely make sure your message is short and sweet, and use contrasting colors like black and white so it will be easier to read.
