One of the best ways to promote your business on-the-go is to design your own bumper sticker. Bumper stickers are effective everywhere: on the interstate, around town, in the park, and in traffic jams. But you can’t simply slap any ol’ sticker on your company (or your customers’) vehicles. If you’re going to design your own bumper sticker, you should follow these basic tenets that will vastly increase your potential for success.
Keep it simple
Limit your bumper sticker copy to just a few words to avoid jumbling your message. Remember that most passers-by will only get a fleeting glance at your bumper sticker, so you have to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. In fact, you should design your own bumper sticker to have fewer words than your business card – two or three words accompanied by your website URL will suffice.
Large, easy-to-read font
Design your bumper sticker with a large, easy-to-read font. Your bumper sticker “headline” should take up the majority of your design space. Use both uppercase and lowercase letters, just as you would with a traditional sentence, so your bumper sticker designs are easy to read. Impact and Arial are often used as bumper sticker fonts, but many designers loathe the overuse and simplicity of these fonts. For a more influential effect, try fonts created for highway systems such as ClearviewHwy, Din Mittel OT or Interstate.
Bold, striking colors
Black on yellow, reverse white typeface on black, royal blue on white – these color combinations help you bumper stickers stand out on the highway. Two colors are all you need in your bumper sticker designs. Your font color should sharply contrast against your background to help your bumper sticker designs stand out at 65 miles per hour.
Create curiosity
Sometimes your message can be simple and obvious, such as “Cheap, quality printing – PsPrint.com.” Other times, you can get customers to visit your website by creating curiosity: “Can your printer do this? PsPrint.com.” Humans have an innate desire to satisfy curiosity, and so building intrigue into your bumper sticker message can pay off. Better yet, design two bumper stickers – one to create curiosity, the other to brand your company with a stated message.
Image use Creative Commons via Flickr.
