From online marketing to smartphones, digital communication formats have multiplied in recent years at the expense of static formats and prints. Their advent is a complete game changer because of the incredible content that can be broadcast and edited seamlessly. Digital signage is one of the tools that can support these multitudes of formats, which is why it is important to review the various creative tools available to anyone who seeks to communicate on this medium.
Content is king,” and while you might be the next Spielberg or Tarantino with a great project and the most creative ideas, it's always best to keep things simple, at least to start with. You'll probably have a good idea of your target audience, but keep in mind that you may only have a few seconds to get their attention, and a few more to get their attention. You should always stick to the motto “simple and effective.”
- Start with a well-contrasting color model with dark text on a light background or, conversely, light/white text on a dark background.
- For the text itself, it's best to stick to sans serif fonts. It is not for nothing that the Helvetica typeface is the most used and most loved in the world for design and display: it has a classic look, it is easy to read, and appeals to a wide audience. Script or serif fonts just don't work as well with this delivery mode.
Once you've decided on colors and fonts, it's important to test the messages on site to make sure they're easy to read from near and far.
Numbers can be more effective in drawing attention and getting messages across. Our brains love numbers, they're quick to integrate, and they pack information into small, neat batches. They also create credibility for your campaigns while taking up less space than words.
Tips for using numbers in your digital signage content:
- Always use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4...) rather than their written equivalent.
- When sharing statistics, use accurate data when you can and avoid rounding to the nearest ten. Odd numbers are more believable than even numbers. For example, “sales up 47%” seems more accurate and credible than “sales up 50%.”
- Use numbers for social validation if your business is comfortable using online channels. For example, if you're asking people to like your page on Instagram, indicate how many people are already following your page.
Although it's still a bit cliché, an image (as well as all the graphic elements) can really be worth a thousand words. By its very nature, digital signage involves supporting messages and reducing the number of words using graphics and images where possible. The world of video games, motion graphics, and digital imaging has made enormous progress in recent years, and with the growing popularity of 4K, the quality of your graphics must be as high as possible.
Once you've defined the header/slogan and content for your messages, look for ways to highlight and draw attention to the key message (s). More specifically, you can enrich your messages with video or animation, which is a great idea if you offer a more sophisticated product or service.
When deciding what colors to use in your display, think about the hues in your company logo or color combinations that represent your brand.
Finally, colors are known to convey emotions, so try to choose colors that convey the ones you want, red (anger, passion, urgency), blue (trust, calm, stability, professionalism), green (growth, natural, organic, ecological), green (growth, natural, organic, ecological), yellow (energy, optimism, warmth) etc.
Sales people's best practices include doing their best to get an order and asking for the desired date and quantity for the order. Your digital signage should do just the same. You have captured the attention of your prospects with sublime graphic elements and aroused their interest with perfect messages, they are ready to make a quick decision, so launch a call to action!
It can simply be a matter of outlining what they should do next and how you can best help them. Today, there are so many channels for communicating with businesses that you need to make it easy for you and your targets by telling them how to reach you about a particular message or announcement. Make sure that the call to action starts with an action verb, to really amplify the urgency for your prospect and the need to act as soon as possible.
Whether you like it or not, PowerPoint is the ideal tool for presentations and one of the most popular in the Office suite. You can easily use it to create any static digital signage content, from restaurant menus to directories, or for various daily presentations. Slides can be saved as JPEG or PNG for download. Are you looking for a free equivalent? If you're not using PowerPoint, try Google Slides.
Adobe Illustrator is now a cloud-based solution in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. It is a much more sophisticated tool than PowerPoint, but it is also relatively easy to understand. Because Illustrator is vector software, it is ideal for creating graphic elements that can be displayed in various sizes without losing quality. This is a top priority for digital signage content, which may need to be displayed on different screens with different dimensions.
Cenareo has been at the forefront of digital signage since 2012 and supports its various customers by relying on cutting-edge technologies aimed at facilitating the creation, management and deployment of digital signage content. Part of our solution is to provide our customers with a wide range of editable digital signage templates, with static images or video. These templates are free.
Digital signage has an obvious advantage over traditional signage, namely the ability to broadcast dynamic content. If you only show static content on your screens, why use digital signage?
Dynamic content is more engaging and your audience will be more likely to continue to pay attention to it if you make the effort to create and share new content on a regular basis, rather than using the same content over and over again, which can get boring, and that's the last thing you want! Examples of dynamic and digital signage content include videos, animations, social media, or weather feeds. In the last two cases, this is the best choice to ensure that you offer new and captivating content, which also requires very little maintenance. And if you're posting your professional social media account, don't forget to check that it's up-to-date!
Social media is now an integral part of most people's daily lives. You will therefore have every interest in integrating them into your digital signage content. For content that is too long for a digital signage screen, you can include a call to action in your company's social profile, which allows people who are really interested to access additional information. YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, Dailymotion, and Flickr can be used for visual content such as news, product information, procedures, and corporate ethics. Be creative when it comes to social media because social media content is already created. It is an easy success! And be never afraid to ask your employees and/or customers for ideas on how you can optimize the use of social media.
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