Bulletin board letter sizes
Most bulletin board titles fail in the same two ways: letters too small to read from the back of the room, or too big to fit across the board. Here is how to pick the size before you print.
Common bulletin board letter sizes
Store-bought bulletin board letter sets come mostly in 4-inch and 7-inch capitals, and those sizes are a good guide. Four-inch letters suit a title on a standard board read from within the room. Seven or eight inches suits a hallway board, a main display or anything read from the doorway. Two to three inches works for labels inside the display, such as names under student work.
A useful rule for reading distance is about ten feet per inch of letter height. A 4-inch title reads comfortably from around 40 feet, which covers most classrooms.
Will the title fit across the board?
Measure the board width, subtract a few inches of margin on each side, and compare it with the title width. You do not have to guess the width. Type the title into the maker at the height you want and the line under the preview gives the width of the whole design in inches. If it is too wide, drop the height or split the title onto two lines, since the maker centers each line.
As a rough guide, a 4-inch capital in the Bubble style averages a little under four inches wide, so a 20-letter title needs about six feet before any spaces.
One letter per page or the whole title
Printing one letter per page gives separate letters you can cut out and space by hand, which is the classic bulletin board look and makes it easy to adjust the spacing on the board. Printing the whole title tiled keeps the letters in one joined strip, which is quicker to put up and stays perfectly straight.
For separate letters on colored backing, print the outlines on colored cardstock, cut them out, and consider a second border by gluing each letter onto a slightly bigger shape of a contrasting color.
Spacing and pinning
- Stretch a piece of string or tape a thin strip of paper across the board as a baseline, then pin letters so their bottoms sit on it.
- Put the middle letter of the title in the middle of the board first and work outwards.
- Leave about a quarter of the letter height between letters and a full letter width between words.
- Use two pins per letter, at the top and the bottom, or they swing when the door opens.