When an airplane banner flies overhead, you only have a few seconds to get your message across. People may be sitting on the beach, walking through a crowded event, watching a game, or looking up from a boardwalk. Your aerial advertisement has to catch their attention and communicate the point quickly.
That makes designing an aerial banner a little different from designing a billboard, social media ad, or print piece. There’s no room for fine print or lengthy explanations. The best airplane banner advertising is simple, bold, and easy to understand at a glance.
Here are seven tips to keep in mind when designing your next aerial advertising campaign.
1. Keep Your Message Short
This is the big one. An aerial banner isn’t the place for a paragraph — or even a long sentence. People need to be able to read and understand your message while the airplane is passing overhead. The fewer words you use, the better chance you have of getting the entire message across.
Focus on the one thing you want people to remember. That might be your business name, a special offer, a website, an event, or a short call to action.
Instead of trying to explain everything your business does, give people one clear takeaway.
2. Make the Most Important Words the Biggest
Not every word needs to have the same visual weight. Think about what someone absolutely needs to notice first. Is it your brand name? A discount? A website? A phrase like “FREE CONCERT TONIGHT”? Make that information prominent.
A clear visual hierarchy helps someone understand an airplane banner even if they don’t have enough time to carefully read every word. Their eyes should naturally land on the most important part of the message first.
3. Choose Easy-to-Read Fonts
Decorative fonts can look great on a computer screen and become nearly impossible to read from the ground. For airplane advertising, readability wins.
Bold, clean typefaces generally work best because the letters remain recognizable from a distance. Avoid fonts with extremely thin lines, overly elaborate script, or unusual letter shapes.
It’s also worth remembering that your audience isn’t standing still and studying the design. Your banner is moving. A font that feels slightly plain up close may be exactly what you need when it’s hundreds of feet overhead.
4. Use Strong Contrast
Color can make a huge difference in how noticeable and readable your aerial advertisement is.
You want enough contrast between the background and the lettering or graphics so the message doesn’t blend together. Dark text against a light background or light text against a dark background will typically be much easier to see than colors with similar values.
This becomes especially important when you consider the environment behind the banner. Your advertisement may be viewed against a bright blue sky, clouds, or changing light conditions.
A design that looks great on a monitor isn’t necessarily going to have the same impact in the air.
5. Don’t Overload the Banner With Graphics
A strong logo or recognizable image can add a lot to an aerial banner. Too many graphics can do the opposite.
Remember that every element on the banner is competing for a limited amount of attention. If you have a logo, photo, headline, URL, phone number, social handle, QR code, tagline, and several other design elements all fighting for space, none of them may stand out.
Ask yourself whether each element is helping communicate the message. If it isn’t, consider removing it. White space isn’t wasted space. In aerial advertising, it can make the important parts of your design much easier to see.
6. Make Your Call to Action Simple
What should someone do after seeing your airplane banner? Visit your website? Go to a nearby location? Attend an event? Remember a brand name?
Your call to action should match what someone can realistically do after seeing the advertisement.
If you’re including a website, shorter is usually better. People aren’t likely to remember a long URL filled with slashes, numbers, or complicated wording after seeing it briefly in the sky.
The same principle applies to phone numbers and social media handles. If the information is difficult to remember, it may be better to focus on a recognizable brand or an easy-to-search phrase instead.
7. Design for the Sky, Not the Computer Screen
One of the easiest mistakes to make is judging an aerial banner solely by how it looks on your screen. Zoomed in, almost any design can look clear. The real question is whether it will still work when viewed from a significant distance while being towed behind an airplane.
Take a step back from the design. Shrink it down. Look at it for only a few seconds. Can you immediately tell what the advertisement is saying? If not, simplify it.
A Good Aerial Advertisement Gets to the Point
Airplane banner advertising works because it puts a message somewhere people don’t expect to see one — in the sky above them. But getting their attention is only half the job. The design needs to turn that attention into recognition.
Keep the message short. Make it bold. Give people one thing to remember.
At Aerial Messages, we help businesses, organizations, event promoters, and advertisers create aerial advertising campaigns designed to get noticed. From banner design and production to flight planning and execution, our team can help you take your message from an idea to the sky.
Ready to get your message in the air? Contact us to start planning your next airplane banner advertising campaign.