See below for digital signage best practices for Texas A&M University College of Engineering departments.
Best Practices
- Digital signage should adhere to accessibility and Americans with Disabilities Act compliance guidelines.
- Practice good design principles. It is important to understand basic elements of design when designing for digital signage, including contrast, color balance, scale composition, readability, negative space, hierarchy and typography.
- Include a call to action, such as a driver to website (use short URL), social page, etc.
- QR codes should be accompanied by short URL text.
- Use good contrast, ideally a dark type on a light background.
- Use a clean, easily readable font, preferably sans serif such as Helvetica, Open Sans.
- Fonts should be bold and large as possible. Type should be big enough to read at a distance.
- Be concise. Less is more. Keep messages uncluttered. Present only the most important information, ideally under 40 words.
- Make lines of text short.
- Keep in mind that each ad only appears for a short time (15-30 seconds). Viewers are passing by and should not have to read a lot of text.
- Consider the most important things the audience needs to know, such as the date, time, event title, location and sponsoring organization.
- Departments should contact their department communicator with questions.
- Proofread your ads prior to submission. Grammatical or spelling errors will cause your request to be returned for correction before posting.
For best results, avoid:
- Large blocks of text.
- Long lines of text.
- Stretched or distorted photos/logos.
- Too many colors.
- Low contrast of text over background images/colors.
- Typos and grammatical errors.
- Blurry QR codes.
- Long URLs.
- Low-resolution/pixelated images.