Minecraft Banner Maker

Designing a banner that still reads from 20 blocks

A banner is 20 by 40 pixels and players mostly see it from across a base. These are the things that decide whether a design survives that.

1. 1

   Six layers is the loom ceiling, and four is usually the design ceiling

   Java commands can stack more than six — the game will draw up to sixteen — but nothing you build in survival ever will, and a banner copied from a six-layer original is the only way to mass-produce one. Past about four layers the shapes start eating each other anyway, and the design reads as mud rather than as a symbol.

2. 2

   Put the contrast between the base and the biggest layer

   The base colour is the whole field, so it decides the banner more than any pattern does. A light base with one dark charge beats a busy design in mid-tones every time. White, black and the two greys are the reliable bases for that reason: every dye reads against them.

3. 3

   Layer order is not a cosmetic choice

   Layers draw bottom-first, so a border applied last frames everything under it, while the same border applied first vanishes under the next solid shape. Borders and gradients almost always want to be last; halves and fields almost always want to be first.

4. 4

   Ten patterns need an item as well as the dye, and four of those have no recipe

   Six of them you craft from paper: field masoned with bricks, bordure indented with vines, flower charge with an oxeye daisy, creeper charge with a creeper head, skull charge with a wither skeleton skull, and thing with an enchanted golden apple. The other four cannot be crafted at all — globe comes from a wandering trader, and snout, flow and guster only turn up in loot chests. Check you can get the item before you design around it, or you will have a plan you cannot build.

5. 5

   Copy the finished banner before you hang it

   Putting a banner and a blank banner of the same base colour in a crafting grid duplicates the design, and that is the only cheap way to make a matched set for a base. Do it before you place the original — and note that a command-made banner with more than six layers refuses to copy.

6. 6

   Shields use the same pattern, at a lower resolution

   Combining a banner with a shield stamps the design onto it, but the shield face is smaller, so fine patterns like paly and the indented borders blur into a smudge. Design for the shield first if that is where it is going to live.

Colours here are Minecraft's own dye values and the patterns are redrawn as vector shapes, so the preview is an accurate approximation rather than the game's textures. The rendering will be a pixel or two off in places; the colours, the layer order and the command are exact.