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Nothing but the facts.... |
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Some of the best, and most
effective banners are usually simple and very direct. The point is
delivered quickly and without a lot of glitz and glamour. You don't
want to leave a lot to the viewer's imagination, as that just takes up
too much of their valuable time.
You only have a couple seconds to grab the attention, and get the message home. Most of the time you will want your particular banner ad to stand out from the rest of the page its displayed on, but with the exchange, your banner is displayed on a wide variety of pages, so a more globally effective design is required. Not an easy task! So
knowing this you will want to create a banner that can hold its own and
stand out on any page. Of course we don't want to go over board, and
offend the site owners either! The size for selftek.com is |
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Using Animation or not.... |
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Animating is often an
effective way of getting a message across, and catching the attention
of a viewer. Just remember that selftek.com only allows up to
13k for their banners so you will have to be fairly strict about how
many frames and colors are going to be used in the banner. The time of
the animation should always be 3-5
seconds max. Anything longer than that and you loose the interest of
the viewer, and anything shorter is generally to quick to get the
message across clearly. Find a good balance.
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The look of the written word |
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Text on the banner must be
readable, and stand out against whatever background you have. It
should also be short and concise. Test, it. If it takes longer than 2
seconds to read…its too long. You can break the text up into a
multiple frame banner to solve this or edit the copy to make it more
focused.
As far as readability just remember that Serif fonts (fonts with hooks and slabs attached to the letter forms) are harder to read at smaller type sizes. Sans-Serif fonts (Those without the hooks and slabs) are better for smaller text. This is only a guideline not a rule however.
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Conclusion |
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So keeping all this in mind, if you design a
banner with your audience and the message in mind (being most
important) and keep it simple, you will already have a good start on
your banner!
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Examples
Banner Resources
There are some people out there that just want to have the work done or them......FREE! These links we have below will allow you to create banners instantly online. You can then come back here and hook them up to your account!