How to Make Simple Digital Signage Text Content and Signs

Creating digital signage content is often one of the blockers for content managers. How do you create content that engages your audience? What are the standard dimensions? What about images, color scheme, word count, font... It's a minefield, we get it.

But making great quality screen content isn't actually that hard. No, honestly...

As a TL;DR before you get stuck into this article, it's worth summarising a few pointers to help you get up and running with sign content. We'll then take a deep dive into some of the specific tools you can find online, and in the ScreenCloud app store.

So, lets get started.

How to create simple digital signage content

For more effective sign content, these three rules are the key:

• Keep it simple
• Make it readable in seconds
• Make it readable from a distance

This can be summarized by highlighting this message below.

This is a simple example of an employee facing message, designed to attract engagement to a survey.

You'll notice that there is a clear header, smaller text which expands on the main message and an image - in this case a QR code which leads to a landing page.

Your signage text displays don't have to exactly match this style, format or word count, but you can see that less is more. Especially in the case of employee facing comms.

Whats more, this type of content doesn't need to take a lot of time to create. In fact, this message was created using our very own Quick Post app, which is designed to create signage content in minutes.

Talking of which, lets start looking at some of the best tools to make simple digital signage content.

1. ScreenCloud design tools

There are plenty of free design tools out there on the market, but here at ScreenCloud we do provide apps designed to make it extra easy to make great content for signage.

These include:

Canvas: Our own drag and drop designed for people who want something more specific.

Quick Post: Add text and images, or link to a URL to make great sigange content in seconds.

Noticeboard: A simple but effective app designed to create text to screen content easily.

We also offer integrations for popular design apps such as Canva, Poster My Wall and various social media and communication platforms.

In fact, there are many other content apps designed to make it easy to automate content creation.

These simple design tools can also be used to create slides that break up a digital signage playlist, helping to infuse your content with guidance for your audience. For example in a trade show or conference, or to add safety messages during events or in healthcare facilities.

2. Image creation tools 

Want to create something a little more complex? Perhaps a promotional poster, or something a bit flashier. Also no problem.

Our Canvas tool makes it very easy to add images and more bold imagery - which can be great if you're running a product promotion, or highlighting other image based features.

Simply login to your ScreenCloud dashboard and you'll find the Canvas app available to start using immediately. From here you can use templates, or start using your own choice of colors, text and more to make effective screen content.

Want something a bit more dynamic? For example an image with moving elements.

The best choice is to use Canva and connect to your ScreenCloud dashboard. This allows you to design a poster, menu board or other dynamic design and then easily connect to go live.

Using these tools you can upload multiple images, add overlays and backgrounds, enter text and change font, positioning and size and then download as a JPEG or PNG of your choosing.

Just like with any image creation tool, uploading your finished piece of art to ScreenCloud is simple. 

Select ‘Content Library’ from the menu on the left hand side, then ‘Upload’ and you’ll have the option to upload your content from your library or a source such as Dropbox or iCloud.

Simple when you know the answer right?

Top tip: When it comes to creating the perfect sized digital signage content, the classic dimensions for a landscape screen are 1920 x 1080 pixels. On a portrait screen it's 1920 x 1080 pixels. When you setup a Canva or PicMonkey template you can usually type these in, ensuring your content is the perfect dimensions for showing on screen once downloaded. 

3. Digital signage design templates

If you’d rather leave the design skills to someone else, you can make creating text content and signs even easier by using a pre-created digital signage design template.

Finding the right template, depends on what you’re looking to create.

As we mentioned above, for simple text and images, Noticeboard is a great option. If you’re looking to create a digital menu board, our templates are free for you to choose from that would suit coffee bars, bistros, burger joints and more. 

There are also tools such as Placeit which offer templates allowing you to pop your image into a mock-up of a screen, tablet or PC. 

For more content templates and free apps check out our guide on 43 free tools that help marketers become designers.

4. Content tools you already know and use

As well as image creation tools there are probably many tools you use each day to create simple text and graph content. Whether you use the classic Microsoft suite of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, or have swapped to Google Drive, Documents and Sheets, all of these content creators can be added to your digital displays.

Numbers

If you’d like to display simple number work, you have a few options. First, you could convert your Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet into a PDF. This can be uploaded using the ScreenCloud content library. 

If you’d like your numbers to upload live, as you change them, your best option is to use the Google Sheets app. By publishing your Sheet so that it is live, you can edit the information as you please and it will update on the big screen for you, without needing to re-upload the file. This is great for budget sheets, statistics and metrics tracking.

Words

ScreenCloud supports PDFs and Office/iWorks formats so any word documents can be uploaded direct into the content library. Just remember that for a landscape screen, you’re going to want to flip the layout to landscape in your word document to ensure everything looks as it should. 

Presentations

Presentations take up so much time and creative space that they’re often the perfect candidate for text and image based digital signage content. These can be uploaded directly as a file or PDF from your desktop, or if you want to make live updates, use Google Slides. The Google Slides app also allows you to set the time and duration for each slide, so that it runs like a real presentation for your audience. 

Ready to start creating great digital signage content? Try ScreenCloud for free for 14 days.