Event branding and signage: banners, backdrops and screens

Event branding is everything a participant sees that carries your name and message: the welcome banner at the gate, directional signs, the stage backdrop, the lectern panel, the screens and the name badges. It is easy to treat it as decoration. In practice it has three jobs.

First, it helps people find their way: registration, plenary hall, breakout rooms, prayer room, toilets, exits. Second, it tells everyone, including the media, who is hosting and why the event matters. Third, it frames the photographs and video that will represent the event long after it ends. A speaker filmed in front of a clear, well-lit backdrop is your event's image in the news and on social media for months.

Before anyone opens design software, walk the venue or study its floor plan. Mark where people arrive, where they queue, where they turn and where cameras will point. Each of those points needs a sign, and each sign needs a viewing distance, a height and a message of a few words.

Then turn the walk into a list with quantities, sizes, materials and who installs each piece. This becomes your event signage checklist, and it stops the classic mistake of designing one beautiful banner while forgetting the arrows to the breakout rooms. Share it with the venue early, because many venues have rules about what can be fixed to walls, pillars and glass.

Most pull-up banner design fails because it is designed on a laptop screen at arm's length and read across a crowded foyer. A useful benchmark comes from the ADA Accessibility Guidelines published by the US Access Board. For signs with their text mounted between 1,780 mm and 3,050 mm above the floor and read from less than 4,570 mm away, characters should be at least 51 mm high; above 3,050 mm and read from under 6,400 mm, at least 75 mm.¹ For longer viewing distances, the guidelines add 3.2 mm of character height for every 305 mm of extra distance, roughly a centimetre per metre.¹

The same guidelines ask for characters that are conventional in form, not italic, script or highly decorative, and for a non-glare finish.¹ For a banner, that means one short headline, your logo, and a web address or hashtag at most. Keep the key message in the upper part of the banner, because tables, people and plants usually hide the bottom.

Backdrop design is really design for the camera. Photographers and video crews frame speakers from the chest up, so logos and the event name must sit at head height behind the lectern and the panel table, not only across the top of a wide stage. A matte material avoids hot spots from stage lighting, which is the same reason the ADA Guidelines ask for a non-glare finish on signs.¹

If the event is donor-funded, check the rules before printing. The European Union's guidance for external actions says material displayed at events, such as banners and posters, should comply with its visibility requirements; on a banner, the EU emblem and funding statement must appear where they will be most prominently visible.² Where other logos appear, the EU emblem must be displayed at least as prominently as them and be at least the same size as the biggest of them, and the emblem and funding statement must not be separated.²

Contrast is what makes a sign readable in a dim hall or in bright sunshine at an outdoor launch. The ADA Guidelines ask for light characters on a dark background or dark characters on a light background.¹ For screens, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for text and 3:1 for large text, defined as at least 18 point, or 14 point bold.³

These thresholds help people with low vision, and because they are based on the difference between light and dark rather than on hue, they also help people with colour vision deficiency.³ Text that is part of a logo has no contrast requirement, so your logo can stay as it is, but the event name and directions around it should meet the standard.³ In our view, the same ratios are a sensible target for printed signs too.

Screens are now part of event branding: holding slides between sessions, speaker name slides, sponsor loops and digital directional signs. Ask the venue for the exact resolution and shape of every screen. Most projection and LED screens are wide, and in PowerPoint the 16:9 widescreen setting is the default for new presentations.⁴ Build a simple template at that ratio for every speaker, with the event name, a safe area for content and your contrast rules already applied.

Keep text on screens short, large and on a plain background. Avoid placing important words at the very bottom of a slide, where the heads of the audience in front will hide them. If the event is recorded or livestreamed, check how the slides look on camera, not only in the room.

Event branding can create a lot of waste. The Sustainable Events Guide published by UNEP and ICLEI advises minimising print material in favour of electronic communication before and after an event.⁵ It describes one large conference that reused 5 per cent of its signs from the previous year and identified 37 per cent of the new signs as usable for future events.⁵

You can design for reuse from the start. Keep dates, venue names and session titles off your main banners and backdrops, and put them on smaller, cheaper pieces or on screens. Choose durable materials for anything generic, store banners carefully, and keep the print-ready files with a clear version name so the next event can reprint only what has changed.

• Venue walked and every sign point marked on the floor plan
• Viewing distance and height set for each sign
• Plain, high-contrast type with one short message per sign
• Logos at head height behind speakers on a matte backdrop
• Donor logo rules checked and signed off before printing
• Screen resolution confirmed and a 16:9 speaker template shared
• Dates and venue names kept off reusable pieces
• Print files stored with clear version names