Guide: How to design effective promotional seating

When designing advertisements, many factors must be taken into account. This is no different in the case of promotional seating. Mastering them all requires experience – time and thousands of produced units. We already have that behind us and are happy to share our insights. Here is our “advertising guide” regarding deckchairs, chairs, pouffes, and inflatable seating.

Location: Choosing the space for your advertisement design

There are two key issues to consider here. First, every promotional furniture item has a specific area where information can be placed. Advertisement design should always begin with an analysis of this space. This is made easier by templates provided by the furniture manufacturer. Usually, a template (similar to what you’ll find in tent design) marks three distinct lines. Let’s remind ourselves what they mean:

Gross Area (Bleed): This line marks the cut of the design before sewing. Your background should reach all the way to this line.

Net Area (Trim): This line indicates where the sewing takes place. To ensure that the design “aligns” correctly, all graphics passing between different parts of the product should end at this point.

Safe Zone: This is the ideal place for your main graphics. By placing elements within this zone, you can be sure that nothing will be cut off or positioned too close to the product’s edge.

Some spots on the seating are definitely not suitable for essential graphics; at most, you can cover them with a decorative print. This applies especially to surfaces that are parallel to the ground and remain invisible most of the time.

Furthermore, when designing advertisements on seating, you must always account for the fact that part of the graphics will be covered when someone sits down. It is therefore worth ensuring that your most important message is placed in an area that remains exposed even in such cases.

Graphics and Color

We have already touched upon how to design graphics for promotional seating in the previous paragraph. It is incredibly important for them to be placed in the right spot. No less critical is the print quality. To ensure an impeccable appearance, it is best to use vector graphics, while raster images should have a resolution of at least 72 DPI at a 1:1 scale. If you would like us to design the seating for you, please send us the appropriate files (e.g., logos, fonts). Graphics should be in AI or EPS format.

There is a reason why “color” is specifically mentioned in the title of this section. It holds particular importance in the case of seating. This primarily concerns light colors, especially white. If possible, for practical reasons, avoid using white on the seat itself and the armrests. It gets dirty very quickly. Stains left by jeans are particularly troublesome – removing them is virtually impossible. Meanwhile, a new pair of navy blue jeans can leave marks even after a short period of use.

Specific furniture – specific tips

Let’s move from general remarks to specifics, as advertisement design for seating is best discussed using individual models.

Deckchairs, chairs, and bean bags

Some promotional seating has a very simple construction, and consequently, the advertising space is also straightforward to manage. This is the case with deckchairs – where you have one rectangular piece of fabric at your disposal – or chairs and bean bags, where there are typically two such pieces. There are no complex material seams, graphic alignments, or other similar traps here.

In such cases, it is easy to pinpoint where to place the most important information. For a deckchair, this is the area at the shoulder height of the person sitting. For a chair, it is both sides of the backrest. When considering a bean bag, the entire surface offers the same potential and effectiveness for graphic exposure.

Advertising Cubes

Advertising cubes offer a much larger canvas for creativity. Here, you have as many as 6 equivalent surfaces to place your graphics. You can opt for 6 separate designs (each functioning as an independent unit) or treat the cubes as elements of a larger installation. In the latter case, you can create a spatial puzzle – a cube wall featuring up to 6 large-scale graphics.

Designing such a wall correctly requires some skill – the goal is to be able to easily swap the graphics on the front and back surfaces. A well-designed wall forms a cohesive whole on both the front and back, regardless of which graphic you choose to display at any given moment. If you are unsure how to achieve this, feel free to entrust the task to our designers!

Sako Beanbags and Armchair Beanbags

A slightly more challenging element to design are sako pouffes, bean bag armchairs, and inflatable sofas or chairs. This difficulty arises from the fact that we are no longer dealing with one or a few simple surfaces, but rather a larger number of components in various shapes.

For instance, when designing a sako pouffe, you must pay attention to the shape it takes during use. Most often, the top part will form a seat and backrest with an irregular form. This is not a good place for your most important message – the material is usually crumpled, making it difficult to predict how it will eventually settle. It is better to move the message lower to the “base” and either repeat it or divide it into three. Why three? Because the pouffe consists of exactly three side panels.

The base is also a great place for messaging in the case of armchairs filled with regranulate. However, there are more possibilities here – the backrest works perfectly as advertising space, especially the shoulder-height section and the entire rear panel of the armchair.

Pascal Inflatable Sofas and Armchairs

In their case, we are dealing with many smaller surfaces – backrest components – and a few slightly larger ones, such as the base panels and the seat surface. How should you approach advertisement design on such a space? As always, we must divide the elements into those that are more and less effective for advertising. In our opinion, key information should be placed on the base panels as well as the front and rear panels of the backrest. If you have elements in your “graphic arsenal” that easily fit into a circular shape (e.g., a logo insignia), you should also utilize the round space on the front of the backrest.

The use of the seat remains an open question. You can use this space as well – especially since the actual seat (its center) has been further distinguished as a separate element. In the case of sofas, there are two such elements. They can be designed in a different color or feature graphics that stand out as a separate entity from the background. However, we do not recommend placing logos here.

Promotional Stools (Hockers, Cylinders)

Advertising hockers (cylindrical seats) offer a completely different set of possibilities. Here, you have two main areas to work with. First, the top of the stool – a circular surface – is perfect for logos or graphics that should be seen from above.

Then, there is the side surface. You can treat it as one continuous, 360-degree wrap-around graphic or divide it into distinct sections. Just like with the cubes, if you’re designing for a cylindrical stool, pay close attention to where the seams will be located to ensure your message remains legible and undistorted. If you want to create a seamless look, use repeating patterns or textures that mask the vertical join.

We hope that our advertising guide has clarified most of your concerns. However, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.