Banner

Also, a bar-shaped piece of non-cloth advertising material sporting a name, slogan, or other marketing message is also a banner.

A heraldic banner, also called a banner of arms, displays the basic coat of arms only: i.e. it shows the design usually displayed on the shield and omits the crest, helmet or coronet, mantling, supporters, motto or any other elements associated with the full armorial achievement (for further details of these elements, see heraldry).

However, the emphasis has, in recent years, shifted markedly towards the permanent or transient display of banners on walls or pillars of churches and other places of worship.

Banners are also used to communicate the testimony of Jesus Christ by evangelists and public ministers engaged in Open Air Preaching.

The iconography of these banners included mines, mills, and factories, but also visions of the future, showing a land where children and adults were well-fed and living in tidy brick-built houses, where the old and sick were cared for, where the burden of work was lessened by new technology, and where leisure time was increasing.

In Sydney alone, by the early twentieth century, thousands of unionists representing up to seventy different unions would take part in such parades, marching behind the banner emblematic of their trade.

The Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Shipbuilders of Australia was formed in 1873 and joined the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union in 1972.

The banner features a kneeling figure in the centre surrounded by scroll work and is decorated with Australian native flowers and images representative of the work of the Union's members such as a New South Wales Government Railways 34 class steam locomotive, the Hawkesbury River rail bridge built in 1889, and a furnace.

The banner is canvas and was painted by Sydney firm Althouse & Geiger, master painters and decorators.

The banner is a powerful interpretive tool in communicating the experience and the history of the Australian labour movement.

Sports banners may also honor notable players or hall-of-fame athletes and commemorate past championships won.

Uruguay's Club Nacional de Football supporters made a 600 x 50 metre banner that weighs over 2 tonnes; they claim it is the largest in the world.

Banners can be found plastered behind a window screen, as billboards, atop skyscrapers, or towed by airplanes or blimps.

In China, it is common to find large red coloured banners, especially in schools, factories, government institutions and construction sites.