Roll-ups, banners, flags: what to pick for trade shows

A roll-up is for an indoor booth, a banner is for a fence, stage or scaffolding, and a flag is for outdoors, so people can spot you from far away. You choose based on four things: indoors or outdoors, how much wind there is, how often you move it, and how long it has to last. Here's each one, the material it's usually printed on, and the design mistakes we avoid.

Side by side

Roll-ups: for the booth and indoors

A roll-up is a spring-loaded base you pull the graphic up from and clip to a pole. The graphic is usually printed on a polyester film made for the job: it stays flat without curling at the edges, and its gray back stops light from behind from showing through the image. Manufacturers recommend it for indoor roll-up stands.

The detail people forget most easily: the bottom goes into the base. Many stands need extra material at the bottom that disappears after setup. On top of that, the lower half of a roll-up is usually hidden behind tables, people or boxes.

What we do:

• logo and main message at the top, at eye level;
• one message, readable from a few steps away, not a brochure stretched over two meters;
• contact details or a QR code in the middle, not at the very bottom;
• nothing important in the last few inches.

PVC and mesh banners: for outdoors and big spaces

A frontlit banner is PVC over a polyester fabric. A typical material weighs around 510 g/m² and carries a B1 fire-retardant certificate for indoor and outdoor use. It's used for banners with grommets, stretched or hung, on walls and scaffolding. It's tough and can be welded, so you can build large formats from several strips.

A mesh banner is also PVC on polyester, but perforated so the wind passes through. It's the choice for scaffolding, fences and any large surface where a solid banner would fill up like a sail. A common mesh material weighs around 250 g/m², and the manufacturer rates it for medium-term outdoor use.

For mounting, one mesh manufacturer's advice works for any banner: grommets every 30–50 cm (roughly 12–20 inches), 1–2 cm from the edge, with the edge reinforced or double-folded.

And a scheduling detail: for banners printed with solvent-based inks, manufacturers recommend letting the material dry for at least 24 hours before finishing. That's why ordering a banner today for tomorrow is a bad idea.

Flags: to be seen from a distance

Advertising flags are usually dye-sublimation printed on a lightweight polyester fabric, around 115 g/m², that lets air through. That lets the flag flutter without tearing or dragging the pole along with it.

The fluttering changes the design rules: a flag is never seen whole and flat. So:

• a big logo and three or four words at most;
• strong colors with high contrast between text and background;
• nothing important along the pole edge, where the sleeve goes.

What trade show organizers ask for

At trade shows and event venues, organizers can require decorative materials to be fire-retardant and ask you to have the certificate on hand. The exact rules are in each show's technical regulations, so read them before you order, not on setup day. The materials above are available with B1 certification, and one mesh manufacturer states outright that B1 makes it suitable for indoor use and trade shows too. Ask your printer for the certificate along with the quote.

The files

For large formats, logos and text should come as vector files, and photos need to be large at the source. Hierarchy matters even more than on an office poster, because people walk past a booth. We wrote about that in our article on the poster that reads in five seconds. For everything booth- and signage-related, see our signage page.