Festivals are a fun time in any city and can be easily promoted through the use of street banners. Commonly, you will see a large banner displayed over the entrance to a street where the festival is being held, or at various locations around the event. If you are planning on holding a festival, here are some real-life tips to assist you in the process. We'll use a sample city that is planning a summer festival to illustrate the design and implementation process.
This city has an annual summer festival that is held downtown. Street traffic is stopped during the festival, but pedestrians are free to roam about the area. Local businesses appreciate the festival as a time to hold sidewalk sales and special events. This interest will allow the city to work with these merchants to further promote the event.
Several different signs will be used to promote this festival. Two large banners will be designed that will be hung over the entrance and exit of the block where the festival will be held. These banners will be displayed at least two weeks before the event to generate more interest.
Street pole banners along this block and several other blocks will also be used to attract more attention for the event. These banners will have a main theme of summer and the colors and graphics that will be used will reflect this season. The city has chosen a color palette of red, blue and yellow for this event.
The large banners will have a yellow background that can be easily spotted from the road. Bright blue text will be used in the center of the banner to display the name of the summer festival. The color red will be brought in to display the dates and times for the festival and on the accent graphics.
The smaller banners will have a red background, with yellow text. This is still following the same theme, but adjusting the colors a little bit to attract people walking by. These banners will also display the name of the festival and dates, but in a much smaller format. Summer themed graphics will be displayed in white and blue in various positions around the text.
Now that the design process is complete, we can move onto the implementation of the banners. As mentioned previously, the two large banners will be hung over the entrance to the street and they will go up two weeks before the event takes place. The city has planned for adverse weather conditions and is prepared to take the banners down if the wind picks up so that they will not tear in adverse conditions.
The smaller banners will be placed on alternating sides of the streets leading up to the area where the festival is being held. This creates a "bread crumb" effect and will virtually lead people to the festival. These banners will also be displayed approximately two weeks before event is held giving people plenty of time to make plans to attend the festival.