Roller banners that stand up straight and sell

A roller banner is 80cm wide and 200cm tall, and that shape decides the design. The mistakes are always the same two.

The bottom of the banner is dead space. It sits below knee height. Anything you put there, such as contact details, a service list or small print, will not be read by a standing adult. Put your logo and headline in the top third, the supporting message in the middle, and treat the bottom as decoration or leave it clean.

Design for three metres, not for your screen. People see a roller banner from across a room or down an aisle. Your headline wants to be readable at three metres, which means considerably bigger than looks right on a laptop. The test: shrink the design on screen until it is the size of a playing card, and if you can still read the headline it works.

Leave the edges alone. The very bottom of the graphic rolls into the cassette and the top goes into the rail, so anything critical too close to either can be lost. We set the file up with the right allowance, but if you are designing it yourself, keep important content well inside.

Resolution. A two metre tall graphic does not need the resolution of a business card, because of viewing distance. What matters more is that logos and type are vector rather than scaled bitmaps, because soft type at that size is very visible. Send us what you have and we will check it free.

We check every roller banner at viewing distance before it prints. If your text is too small or your logo is going to be soft, we tell you while it can still be fixed, and layout work starts at £15.

The £79 is genuinely everything: the aluminium stand, the printed graphic on anti curl material, and a padded carry case. There is no separate hardware cost. Ready in 3 to 4 working days.

Anti curl material matters more than it sounds. Cheap roller banner film curls at the edges after a few rolls, so the banner ends up looking like a scroll. The material we print on stays flat through repeated use, which is the whole point of a product you are meant to keep taking out of a bag.

Where they earn their money. Market stalls and craft fairs, where you are one pitch among fifty and need to be identifiable from the top of the aisle. Exhibition stands and trade shows. School receptions and open evenings. Shop doorways for a promotion. Anywhere you need presence for a day and nothing on the walls.

Replacing an old graphic. If you already own a stand and the print is faded or out of date, you often do not need a new stand at all. Email us a photo of the mechanism, or tell us the make, and we will quote a replacement cartridge. It is usually a good bit cheaper than £79 and it keeps a working stand out of a skip.

For a fixed installation rather than a portable one, a PVC banner or a Foamex board is the right product. For something you hand out at the same event, flyers and business cards pair with it naturally.