A chalkboard is the cheapest daily advertising a business owns and the easiest to waste. Most are illegible from the distance at which they are actually seen.

One message, not five

A person walking past gives a pavement sign about two seconds. That is one idea: a special, an offer, a reason to stop. A board carrying five things communicates none of them.

If you have five things to say, say one today and another tomorrow. That is the entire advantage a chalkboard has over a printed panel.

Bigger than feels right

Write it, then stand where the customer walks and read it. Almost everybody writes too small the first few times, because at arm’s length it looks generous.

Fill the width. Use the whole height. Leave the decorative flourishes for the corners rather than the message.

The surface decides everything

A proper matte chalkboard laminate takes and releases chalk cleanly. A glossy painted panel smears, ghosts and eventually keeps a permanent shadow of last week’s message.

Liquid chalk pens are brighter and far better in rain, but on the wrong surface they are close to permanent. Test a corner before committing to them.

Keep the brand off the writing area

Put the business name on a printed header panel above the chalk area. It stays consistent, it does not have to be redrawn daily, and it frees the whole writing surface for the one thing you actually want read.

It also stops the board looking like a hand-lettered logo, which is the fastest way to make a good business look improvised.