Best Practices
See below for the best practices regarding digital signage in the Zachry Engineering Education Complex.
- Digital signage must 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 content sending visitors to a website (short URLs are best), a social page, etc.
- Use good contrast, ideally with dark type on a light background.
- Use a clean, easily readable font, preferably a sans serif such as Helvetica, Open Sans.
- Fonts should be bold and as large as possible. Type should be big enough to read from at least 6 feet away.
- 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). Passersby will most likely ignore excessively wordy ads.
- Consider the most important things the audience needs to know, such as the date, time, event title, location, sponsoring organization and contact information.
- Departments: Departments should contact their department communicator (or digital signage designee) with questions.
- Proofread your ads prior to submission. Grammatical or spelling errors will cause your request to be returned for correction before posting.
What to Avoid
For best results, avoid the following for digital signage:
- Large blocks of text.
- Long lines of text.
- Stretched or distorted photos and logos.
- Too many colors.
- Typos and grammatical errors.
- Blurry QR codes.
- Long URLs.
- Low-resolution/pixelated images.