Billboards are everywhere! It is hard to drive through a town or city and not spot a gigantic outdoors advertisment at every turn. There are many different types of billboards and interesting ways of creating these advertisments. Use this hub to learn about some of the trends and ideas used in Indiana billboard advertising and Ohio billboard advertising.

from www.bpsoutdoor.com

Billboards are becoming more and more popular today. Perhaps it's because they reach more people for cheaper prices than any other type of media. Or perhaps it's because people are spending much more time in their vehicles now than ever before. Since billboard advertising is increasing so much, I think it is very important for all business owners and everyone involved in advertising to know the basics of billboards

Painted Billboards

Painted billboards are the oldest form of outdoor advertising. This concept originally came from the drawings on cave walls. Since the cave drawings, billboard advertising has adapted to technology and grown phenomenally.

Billboard companies use a special outdoor paint for their signs. This special paint is weather resistant, and it also has an ultra-violet absorber that will resist fading.

Painted billboards are also known as painted bulletins or paints. We recommend painted bulletins for signs that do not have complicated graphics but do have long contracts. Below you will see examples of a painted bulletins. (Click on each image to make it bigger.)

Benefits:

Long Lasting - Painted Bulletins can last from 12 months to 36 months.

Quick - On average, it takes 7 days to produce a painted bulletin.

Rain Resistant - Unlike vinyls or posters, the rain will not damage painted signs.

Vinyls

A majority of the billboards with complicated graphics have vinyls on them. These vinyls are printed on a wide format printer. All of our vinyls are protected with a special Ultra-Violet coating that allows the vinyls to last for years.

Types of Vinyls:

Adhesive - These vinyls have sticky backsides. Adhesive vinyls can be used to attach a photograph on a painted bulletin or the entire sign can have an adhesive vinyl placed on it. Since adhesive vinyls have sticky backgrounds, they cannot be moved.

Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA) - This is the type of vinyl that is used on tri-vision billboards. PSA's can also be used to cover up parts of vinyls. For example, let's say a new franchise restaurant will soon open a store in a brand-new location and they want a billboard that says "Opening Soon." After the restaurant opens, they will want their sign to say "Now Open." PSA's allow us to print the vinyl with "Now Open" and print a cover that says "Opening Soon" which will be placed on the vinyl when it is first installed. When the restaurant opens, the "Opening Soon" cover can be pealed off to reveal "Now Open." This method is a lot more time and cost effective than ordering a new vinyl.

Flex vinyls are the most common type of vinyl. These vinyls do not have sticky backs like adhesive vinyls, instead they are "hung" on the edges of the boards. Flex vinyls can be easily be moved to several different locations.

Benefits:

Long Lasting - Vinyls can last years.

Flex vinyls can easily be moved to several different locations

Your imagination (& the law) are the only limitations to what you can put on billboards with vinyls.

We recommend vinyls for detailed images like photographs of people. Below you will find examples of vinyls

Posters

Poster Panels are very common along secondary roads. Posters are very similar to wall paper. They are printed on several sheets of paper and glued on a metal faced sign. Posters are printed on paper in either 8 sheets (junior posters) or 30 sheets (10.5 feet by 22.8 feet standard posters.) Below are examples of posters.

Poster panels are also known as papers, paper bulletins, 30-sheets, or junior posters. Since posters must be installed on metal faces, you can easily identify poster signs by the thick metal frame around the edges.

Benefits

Rotation - Due to weather conditions, posters only last for 30 days. This allows advertisers the opportunity to change locations and designs every 30 days.

Flexibility - The contracts can be long term (12 months) or short term (30 days)

Time Sensitive Material - Posters are great for companies that want to remind potential customers of their current specials, birthday wishes or grand openings.

Gross Rating Point (GRP)

GRP is the total number of postings in a marketing schedule versus the population. The GRP is calculated by dividing the traffic count by the population.

Posters can be purchased as 25, 50, 75, or 100 GRP (showings). For example, if you want a 50 GRP (showing), than 50% of the population should see your billboards every single day.

Studies have shown that in a 100 showing, advertisers can reach 88% of the adults 28 times a month. In a 50 showing, advertisers can reach 83% of adults 15 times a month.

Common Billboard Terms

Spectaculars - stacked billboards or when two billboard faces that are on top of each other are combined to make one big billboard. Below you will find an example of a spectacular

Copy - All wording (text) on billboards

Bleed - The edges of a flex vinyl that is used to wrap around the sides of the board. We normally use a 6" bleed with 4" pockets on our vinyls.

from www.outdoorbillboard.com

Great billboard artwork is a combination of simple concepts steeped in decades of research. As long as you follow these basic, time-proven steps, you will always deliver your client a billboard that is attractive and effective. And if you fail to utilize this information, brought to you by billboard company research beginning in the 1920s, your client’s billboard may be illegible and ineffective.

Keep It Simple

You should not put more than a few words on a billboard. Why? Two reasons. First, you can’t grasp more than a few words while reading and driving at 55 mph. Secondly, the size of the words is very important – you want to keep the main copy at approximately 36” character height – so the fewer the words, the larger the type and the better the visibility. To make this happen, you have to distill the advertiser’s message down to its simplest form. This is one of your key goals in creating great artwork – what is the key message and how can you express it in the fewest possible words?

Legible Typestyles

There are a lot of typestyles out there – and most of them should never be used on a billboard. The typestyles you use must be easy to read. Those include simple styles such as times roman and universe. Always use styles that have very bold, thick strokes – they are easier to read at far distances. Most of the highly stylized typestyles that are popular in print advertising are completely inappropriate in billboards, although many graphic designers refuse to acknowledge this. If the viewer can’t read your copy, what it the point of the billboard?

High Contrast

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America in 1928, published their findings of exhaustive research into what color combinations are the most legible on a billboard. The best colors, in order of success, more maximum contrast are

1)black on yellow

2)black on white

3)yellow on black

4)white on black

5)blue on white

6)white on blue

7)white on green

8) green on white

9)red on white

10)white on red.

When the words and background on a billboard have little contrast, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to read the message. And it you cannot read the message, the ad is a total waste.

Graphic Must Convey

If you are going to put a picture in the ad (and you probably should) make sure that it compliments and helps tell the story. For example, a restaurant might want to show a plate of appetizing food as the graphic – not a leprechaun looking at a four leaf clover. The graphic should help sell the product or service, and make the ad memorable enough that you can remember the name of the company (such as the gecho for Geico).

Test and Re-test

Once you have a design that meets these criteria, you have to test it on some sample consumers to see if it works. These may be, in the simplest form, some of your co-workers. Tape the finished artwork to a distant wall, and then have the guinea pig walk toward the wall and tell you when they can see it clearly and what it means (try as best as you can to replicate the distance and size that the billboard will be seen). Be sure to use color artwork, so you don’t cheat with the simple, high-contrast black and white version. A winning piece of art will have good visibility at a distance so far that most of the copy is illegible – yet just the headline grabs the viewer’s attention and makes them want to read the balance of the ad.

Conclusion

There is no magic to producing great billboard ad copy. In fact, when you get away from the simple, time-proven roots of great copy is when you fail in your mission. You may be tempted to stray from these logical benchmarks to create “breakthrough” advertising – but instead all you will create is an embarrassment. Due to the difficulty in reading an ad at 55 mph from 1,000’, a lot of the creative things that work in print ads just don’t apply here.

So if you want to be known for having happy customers with ads that really sell, you need to stick to the points outlined above.