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Construction hoarding is one of the largest pieces of marketing a project will ever have. It can run for hundreds of metres, it is in place for months, and the people walking past it are often the exact audience you want to reach. It is also seen in a way most marketing is not: very large and very close.
That changes how the CGIs on it need to be produced.
Plan the format before you render
Most CGIs are composed for a screen or a brochure page. Hoarding panels are long and relatively short, so a standard landscape image often leaves too much empty sky or foreground once it is cropped to fit.
For Hardwick Hall Hotel, the main view of the new spa's internal pool was rendered in a wide format specifically for the hoarding. Composing it that way from the start meant the image filled the run of panels properly, rather than being stretched or heavily cropped afterwards.
Detail holds up at full size
The Hardwick Hall hoarding stands around 6ft tall and runs for 150m. At that scale, people are effectively looking at the image life size. Any shortcuts in modelling, textures or lighting become obvious.
To hold up close, the CGIs needed a high level of detail in:
- Materials and textures, such as stone, timber and water
- Lighting, so surfaces read naturally at a large scale
- Smaller details like furniture, planting and fittings that would normally go unnoticed
- Resolution, so the print stays sharp when viewed from a pavement
Sell the feeling, not just the building
Hoarding gets seconds of attention. A technical view of a building rarely does much in that time. For a hotel spa, the brief was to communicate an experience: calm, special, private, high end, natural and tactile.
That drives choices about which views to produce, how they are lit and what is left out. A quiet, softly lit pool says more about a spa than an elevation ever could.
Think about the whole run
On long hoardings, the design needs to work as a sequence. People walk past it, drive past it or see a short section from across the road. It helps to plan:
- Where the hero images sit, usually near entrances and busy viewpoints
- How text and logos repeat so the message is never more than a few panels away
- How gates, posts and joints break up the artwork
- Contact details or a website that are readable from a distance
Good hoarding turns a building site into an early showcase for the finished project. If you are planning one, it is worth briefing the CGIs and the hoarding together. You can read more in our post on hoarding design for construction sites, or see our sales plans, brochures and hoarding service.
