Great billboard advertising can stop someone in their tracks. It can plant a brand in someone’s mind during their morning commute, or prompt a purchase decision on an evening drive home. But an average one? It gets ignored.
The difference between the two often comes down to design. Even the best billboard location in the country won’t deliver results if the creative isn’t up to scratch. Whether you’re planning your first out-of-home (OOH) campaign or looking to sharpen your approach, this guide covers everything you need to know about billboard design done right.
Designing a billboard is very different to designing for digital or print. You’re working with a large format that people see at speed, often from a distance, and usually for just a few seconds. That changes everything.
Start by thinking about your audience and where they’ll be when they see your ad. Are they driving past at 40mph in a retail park? Waiting at a bus stop in a town centre? Standing on a busy high street? The context shapes how much information they can take in, and how long your message has to land.
From there, the golden rules are simple – keep it short, make it clear, and make sure it looks great at scale. Everything else follows from those three principles.
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Good billboard design isn’t guesswork – it comes down to a handful of principles that, when applied well, make the difference between a campaign people remember and one they drive straight past.
Not all billboards are the same. A 6-sheet poster outside a bus stop works differently to a 48-sheet roadside hoarding, for example, while a digital billboard has different creative possibilities to a 3D billboard installation. As the old saying goes, it’s about picking horses for courses.
Before you start designing, make sure you know exactly what format you’re working with and where it’s located. This affects your dimensions, the resolution you’ll need, and how much detail you can realistically include. At Priority Outdoor, we help you identify the right format for your campaign goals from the outset, so your design brief is set up for success before you put pen to paper.
This is arguably the most important rule in billboard design. According to Outsmart, the UK’s out-of-home advertising trade body, the most effective outdoor ads use short, punchy messaging – with many industry practitioners citing seven words or fewer as the sweet spot for billboard copy.
Think of your billboard as a headline, not an article. Strip your message back to the single most important thing you want people to know, and make that as clear and compelling as possible. Every extra word, logo or design element you add reduces the speed at which your message is understood.
If people can’t read your billboard easily, they won’t bother. Font choice matters more on outdoor formats than almost anywhere else.
Stick to clean, simple typefaces that are legible from a distance. Avoid decorative or script fonts – they can look great up close but become hard to read when scaled up and viewed at speed. As a practical guide, each inch of letter height is typically readable from around ten feet away. So a billboard viewed from 200 feet needs letters at least 20 inches tall.
Simple fonts, generous sizing and tight copy go a long way.
Blurry or pixelated images on a billboard don’t just look poor – they actively damage brand credibility. At large formats, low-resolution images become very obvious, and they can undermine an otherwise strong design.
Always work with high-resolution photography or vector graphics, and make sure any images are prepared at the correct specifications for your format. If you’re unsure about print-ready artwork requirements, the Priority Outdoor team can advise on technical specs and help make sure your creative is production-ready.
Strong contrast is what makes a billboard readable from a distance. Light text on a dark background, or dark text on a light background, ensures your message stands out – whether it’s a bright summer afternoon or an overcast winter morning.
Be mindful of how your colours work together. A design that looks striking on a monitor can appear flat or hard to read when printed at scale in different lighting conditions. According to research from AdWorld, high-contrast visuals in OOH advertising significantly improve how quickly audiences process and recall a message – making contrast one of the simplest and most effective tools in your design toolkit.
A call to action (CTA) tells your audience what to do next. Without one, even the most eye-catching billboard can feel like a dead end.
Your CTA doesn’t need to be complex. A website URL, a phone number, a social media handle, or a simple instruction like “Visit us today” gives people a clear next step. Keep it short and easy to remember – especially if your audience is likely to be driving past.
Getting your billboard design right takes more than following a checklist. It takes an understanding of the format, the location, the audience and the campaign goals – and how all of those things work together.
At Priority Outdoor, we work with brands at every stage of the process. From helping you choose the right billboard format and location, to advising on creative and ensuring your artwork is production-ready, we’re here to make sure your outdoor campaign performs.
Whether you’re a local business running your first campaign or an established brand looking to grow your outdoor presence, we’d love to help.
Get in touch with the Priority team today to find out more.
