You’ll see what materials are used to make printed banner displays, as well as the printing method used to press the graphics on. Plus, screen printing polyvinyl and fabric items versus dye Sublimation printing cloth fabric banners. What types of materials are banners made of? The two main categories of banner materials: vinyl (PVC) and fabric or cloth banners. That’s the easy answer. However, it is helpful to know the variations within each category, so I’ll start with the vinyl banner category first, as it’s simpler, I think. Vinyl Banners: Advertising Banner With a Stand First off, PVC or vinyl banners come to us as roll stock, and we either screen print (becoming less common), or digitally print these banners on a wide format digital printer. Cloth or Fabric Banners: The second main category is fabric banners, which are most frequently made using polyester, nylon, or other synthetic fabrics. Most of these banners are currently printed using a printing method called dye sublimation printing. Some street banners and cloth banners are also screen printed if the volume of printing justifies setting up the screens to do so, or the print shop specialized in street banners created by screen printing. Dye sublimation digital printing of banners is one of my personal favorite advertising graphics to sell. It is very classy compared to vinyl banners, so much so that they have taken over the high end trade shows as the banner of choice, at least for companies that don’t want to appear cheap. The dye sub print process uses heat and pressure to transfer the CMYK print from the transfer paper to the synthetic fabric itself. Over the past few years, digital direct to substrate dye sublimated printing has started to take over the fabric banner industry because it has less steps involved in printing a banner using dye sublimation that the heat and pressure method. it’s faster and cheaper to produce, so many printers are switching to this type of printer for those reasons.