A driver on SG Highway passing a hoarding at 70 kmph gets about two seconds of actual attention. Not two seconds of approach time. Two seconds of eyes off the road, because that is roughly as long as anyone safely looks away from traffic.
Everything on that board has to land inside those two seconds.
Most hoardings in Ahmedabad fail this test. Nine words of copy, a phone number, an address, three product photos, and a QR code nobody will ever scan at speed. The design was approved on a laptop screen where all of it was perfectly readable.
These are the rules that actually decide whether a hoarding works, plus the AMC conditions most businesses discover only after the artwork is printed.
What is outdoor branding?
Outdoor branding covers any physical advertising placed in public space: hoardings, unipoles, gantries, building fascia signs, shop boards and transit media. Unlike digital advertising, it cannot be targeted, paused or A/B tested after it goes up. That makes the design and the site selection the entire campaign, which is why both get decided before anything is printed.
The eight rules
Rule 1: Size the letters to the road, not to the board
The single most common mistake is scaling type to look balanced on the artwork instead of legible from the road.
The working rule is roughly one inch of letter height for every 25 to 40 feet of viewing distance. Design toward the conservative end.
| Letter height | Readable from |
| 20 inches | 500 to 600 feet |
| 24 inches | 600 to 720 feet |
| 30 inches | 750 to 900 feet |
| 40 inches | 1,000 to 1,200 feet |
On a city road where the board is visible for 300 feet, small type is survivable. On a highway approach, anything under 20 inches is decoration.
A layout that survives at thumbnail size will always survive at forty feet. Check the artwork small before you check it large.
Rule 2: Six words is the ceiling
Letter height decides word count, not the other way round.
At 30-inch letters on a standard 40-foot face, you get roughly 25 characters per line. That is four to six short words. Not four to six words plus a tagline plus a website.
Write the line. Then cut it in half. Then check whether the brand name is doing the work that a word was doing.
Rule 3: Match the format to the road
Indian outdoor uses a few standard sizes, and each one belongs on a different kind of road.
| Size | Where it belongs |
| 20 × 10 ft | Urban junctions, neighbourhood routes |
| 30 × 20 ft | Arterial roads, commercial corridors |
| 40 × 20 ft | Highway sites, landmark locations |
| 60 × 30 ft | Expressways, gateway sites |
Bigger is not automatically better. A 60 × 30 board on a congested inner city road is often seen from too close and at too sharp an angle to read properly, and you paid for scale that the site cannot deliver.
Rule 4: Contrast decides legibility, not colour
Brand colours matter less than the gap between foreground and background.
Dark type on a light ground or light type on a dark ground both work. Two mid tones together, however beautiful on screen, collapse into grey at 200 metres. This is also why thin, elegant fonts fail outdoors. Thin strokes optically break up at distance, so a medium or bold weight reads while a light weight disappears.
Test the artwork by shrinking it to thumbnail size on your phone. If it is unreadable at that size, it is unreadable from the road.
Rule 5: One image, one idea
A hoarding is not a brochure. One product, one visual, one message.
If the brief contains three products, that is three hoardings on three sites, not one board split into thirds. Splitting the board means nobody sees any of the three.
Rule 6: Put the logo where the eye ends
Reading happens left to right and top to bottom, so the eye lands last at the bottom right. That is where the brand belongs on most layouts.
Placing the logo top left means it gets read first, before the message has earned any attention, and then forgotten. There are exceptions for very strong brand marks, but they are exceptions.
Rule 7: Design for weather and lighting, not for the screen
Ahmedabad summers bleach flex. Monsoon warps badly tensioned material. A colour that looked rich in the design file fades by month four.
Ask two questions before approving artwork. Is this site lit at night, and if so, from which side? And what happens to these colours after three months in direct sun? Darker, more saturated colours hold up better than pastels, and a site with no lighting is effectively a twelve-hour site, not a twenty-four-hour one.
Rule 8: Design to the permission, not around it
This is the rule that costs the most when ignored. The artwork has to fit the approved dimensions before it goes to print, which is why the next section matters even if someone else is filing your application.
What AMC actually requires
Outdoor advertising in Ahmedabad is governed by the Ahmedabad Outdoor Policy, 2023, and permissions run through the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s online platform, Advision AMC.
An important distinction first, because businesses get this wrong constantly.
If you are booking a hoarding site from a media owner, the permission for that structure sits with the media owner. Ask to see it before you pay. An unpermitted site can be taken down mid-campaign, and you will not get the money back.
If you are putting up your own board on your shop, showroom or factory, the permission is yours to obtain. This is where most businesses are caught out.
For self-signage, the policy sets out several conditions:
Permission comes before installation. You need the permit first, not after.
Size is capped at 25 percent of the building facade area. A large board on a small frontage is not approvable regardless of how well it is designed.
One business information board per single-owner premise. Multiple boards for one business on one building are not permitted.
The board must be non-reflective, must not obstruct pedestrian movement, fire escapes, doors or windows, and cannot be attached to trees or shrubs.
It must display the business name and the shop or premise number.
Erection must happen within 30 days of receiving the site erection permit.
The application itself runs to six steps and requires proof of property ownership, design plans, structural safety documentation, and a stability certificate from an AMC-approved civil engineer, along with the fee.
That stability certificate is worth planning for. It takes time, it needs an approved engineer, and it cannot be arranged the week you want the board up.
Rules and fees change, so confirm the current requirements on Advision AMC before you commit to a print run. This is general guidance, not a substitute for checking the live policy.
Common outdoor branding mistakes
Approving artwork at full size on a monitor
Every hoarding looks readable at 100 percent zoom on a 27 inch screen. Zoom out until the board is the size of a matchbox. That is closer to how it reads from a car.
Putting a phone number on a highway board
Nobody writes down a number at 80 kmph. A short brand name they can search later works. An eleven-digit number does not.
QR codes on high-speed sites
They work on a bus shelter where someone is standing still. They do not work on an arterial road.
Forgetting the viewing angle
A board seen head-on and a board seen at 30 degrees from an approaching lane are different design problems. Visit the site before designing, or at least ask for a photograph taken from the approaching direction.
Using the same artwork for every size
A 20 × 10 and a 40 × 20 are different aspect ratios. Scaling one to the other either crops the message or leaves dead space.
Designing before the size is confirmed
Artwork built for a size the permission will not allow has to be redone. Confirm the approved dimensions first.
Why the print file matters as much as the design
Outdoor is one of the few channels where the design and the print have to agree before anything goes up.
Artwork handed over without print specifications gets adjusted by the printer. Bleed gets added by someone guessing, colours shift because nobody specified Pantone against the substrate, and the file that looked right on screen is not the file that goes on the press.
Settle the dieline, the bleed and the colour definitions before handover. Ask the printer for their specification sheet rather than assuming a standard one applies, because flex, vinyl and backlit material behave differently.
Before you approve the artwork
Print the design at A4, stick it on a wall, and walk back fifteen feet. If you cannot read the message in under two seconds, neither can a driver.
That one test catches most of the problems on this page.
If you want artwork designed around the AMC conditions from the start, so the application does not come back for a resize, talk to our outdoor branding team.
We also handle indoor and retail branding, event and exhibition branding, and print design through our guide to packaging design for manufacturers.
Frequently asked questions
What size should a hoarding be?
Match it to the road. 20 × 10 ft for urban junctions, 30 × 20 ft for arterial roads, 40 × 20 ft for highway sites and 60 × 30 ft for expressways. Larger formats on slow inner city roads are usually wasted.
How many words should a hoarding have?
Six at most, and fewer is better. At readable letter heights a standard hoarding face only holds around 25 characters per line, so the word count is decided by the type size rather than by the copywriter.
Do I need permission for a board on my own shop?
Yes. Self-signage in Ahmedabad requires a permit from AMC through the Advision platform before installation, and the board cannot exceed 25 percent of the building facade area. The application is yours to file, so confirm the approved size before the artwork is designed.
Who takes the permission for a rented hoarding site?
The media owner holds the permission for the structure. Ask to see it before paying, because an unpermitted site can be removed while your campaign is running.
What letter height is readable from a highway?
Around 20 inches for 500 to 600 feet, 30 inches for 750 to 900 feet. The working rule is one inch of letter height for every 25 to 40 feet of viewing distance.
How long does a hoarding design take?
The design itself is quick. The permission, the stability certificate and the site availability are what set the timeline, so start those first.
