I wanted to make a banner ad for doing custom CGI work. First, I selected a banner blank from the banner blank from the banner blanks page. I chose sm-black-maroon-black because it looked like it had some potential for what I wanted to create.
Now with a banner blank chosen, I returned to The Banner Generator Form to
create the first graphic. I decided I wanted to put large bold letters
saying "Prescient Code Solutions" across the length of the banner blank.
I chose the font Helvetica-Black-SemiBold-Bold from the
Conservative Fonts selection box. I picked an off-red
Foreground Color using rbg value
#771111. I set the Background Color to
Black, and the Advanced Algorithm 1 to
Blur 5%. Since
I was using an advanced algorithm, I had to set Transparency
to Background. Then I experimented
changing the Font Size and Border until
I had a banner that was approximatly 400x40. I wanted it to be pretty much
centered in the banner blank. I ended up using Font Size
33 and a Border value of 11×9.
My banner turned out to be 400x39 which is close enough. Netscape browsers
will tell you the size of your banner in the title bar of
the netscape window, if you are looking at the banner alone on the page.
Now that I had created my first banner, I used the Mount link on the Banner Output page to mount this banner on the black-maroon-black banner blank. On the Banner Mount Form I entered black-maroon-black into the Mount on Graphic field. I chose to name my mounted banner custom so I entered that into the Name your Mounted Banner field. Then I hit submit and it mounted my banner onto the banner blank. On the Banner Mounted page, I viewed by banner and noted that it was called custom.
After looking at the mounted banner and making sure that it was exactly
the way I wanted,
I returned to The Banner Generator Form using the back button
on my browser. I changed the Banner Text field to say "Custom CGI"
and then selected Lefty Casual from the Longhand
Fonts. I chose font size 45 and set the
Border to 200x4. I chose 200 because that is half
of the width of the final banner. I wanted to have this banner
offset on the right side of the banner ad that I was creating.
I then chose a shade of grey, #777777, for the Foreground
Color. I unset Advanced Algortithm 1 and set
Transparency to none. If you aren't using an advanced
algorithm then you do not need to use the transparency when mounting a banner.
The banner looked like it might work, so I then went to the Banner Mount Form and it remembered that I was working on a graphic called custom so it already filled in the Mount on Graphic field with custom. It also filled in the Name yout Mounted Banner with custom1. All I had to do then was hit Mount Banner and it mounted the banner onto custom1. However, when I looked at my mounted banner I realized that I had used the wrong font size, and it was not quite where I wanted it. I used the back button to go back to the Banner Mounted page and used the Discard link to get rid of custom1 so I could remake the "Custom CGI" banner and remount it to the custom banner.
I went back to the The Banner Generator Form page and modified my previous banner by setting the Font Size to 52 and the Boarder to 175x3. Then I resubmitted the banner, remounted the banner on custom, and finally I recreated custom1. This time it looked how I wanted it to look. Had I not discarded the first custom1, the Mount program would have thought that I wanted to mount the banner onto custom1 and create custom2.
The banner ad was finally starting to look like I wanted and I decided to put the finishing touches on it. I wanted to add "coder.com" to the bottom left corner of the ad in a courier font. I chose Courier-Bold from the Standard Fonts and set the Font Size down to 12. I set the Border to 11x30 because I wanted it to be aligned with the very first banner I mounted (11), and because I wanted it to be in the bottom of a 40 pixel high graphic (30). I left all the other options the same and submitted by banner.
It came out looking as I wanted, so I continued to mount this final banner. The Mount Form again guessed that I wanted to mount onto custom1 and call it custom2 so I just hit Mount Banner and I got this:
The trickiest part of mounting a banner is choosing the right Font Size and the right Border. You must keep in mind the size of the banner blank you are positioning your banner on.
The key is to remember that if you do not like your mounted banner, you should discard it before returning to The Banner Generator Form.
Good luck!