Your brand in the sky: Observations on billboard design

Choosing to market with billboards can introduce your company to a lot of people and help build a customer base within your local market. For all their potential benefits, unfortunately, billboards are tricky animals. They give you a lot of space for your design and message, and then ask you to put very little on it to be effective.  One or two bold colors, one short headline, and maybe one image – and we stress maybe – are all you can afford to use on this medium.

We did some traveling – approximately 1500 driven miles of it – over the holidays, and to pass the time conducted a completely non-scientific billboard study. The results were that we could read approximately 60% of all the billboards we passed. And that’s as a passenger. A driver with less time to study the landscape would most likely have a lower recognition percentage.

Of those billboards that we could not read, the most common problem was the amount of text. This was followed by color choices (using colors without enough contrast), non-readable fonts (particularly scripts), distracting or confusing images and text on top of images. As a result of our observations, we would like to make a few recommendations.

Pick your words wisely.
All good marketing copy should be simple and concise. And billboard copy has to be the simplest of them all. After you have established your goals and message for your billboard, you will need to decide on how to say it in the shortest possible way. If it takes more than 6 or 7 words, you need to simplify. Drivers cannot be expected to take in more than that at 50 mph.

A good rule of thumb for judging how readable your billboard is is the “business card at arms length” test. The proportions of a business card held at arms length are approximately the same as a billboard off a highway. So, put your design on a 3.5″ x 2″ sheet of paper, hold it up and look at it. If it is not clear to you, it will not be clear on the road.

Say it with color.
One of the best ways to add visual interest and impact to your billboard is with strong, contrasting colors. Paired with a bold, easily readable headline, color may be the only graphic element necessary. Color can both demand attention, elicit emotion, and convey a feeling. Hopefully, you have already worked with a designer to develop a strong color for your brand that is reflective of your business philosophy. Billboards can be a great place to let that color work for you.

Achieve a balance.
If you decide to use an image on your billboard, then you will have to work a little harder to avoid visual clutter. In order to keep your copy and your imagery from competing with each other, choose one focus and make it obvious.  Do you want people to see the image first, then move to the copy as a support element, or the other way around? Whichever focus you choose, exaggerate it. Make it obvious, or you risk loosing the clarity of your message.

Break out of the mold.
If your budget allows it, go over the top. Or maybe out the side. Billboards that break the rectangular mold are instantly more memorable. They make people want to look at them. Chick-fil-a has mastered this strategy with their series of billboards on which the three-dimensional cow is painting the headline. But remember, even when you are breaking the mold, the rules of simplicity and balance still apply.