We’ve posted before about Brand Standards for Digital Signage, but we want to go into some more specifics about brand guidelines for digital sign content designs. Although most organizations do a great job branding their overall layouts, some forget to create basic brand guidelines for the content that will be shown in those layouts.
You’ll want to start with your corporate identity – logos, colors and fonts – that we discuss in our other post. You may not need to include logo guidelines for content if your logo is included on your layout. (It’s just wasting space to put it in the messages, if that’s the case.) However, if you have various logos for products, divisions or special initiatives that might be included in messages or videos, be sure to set guidelines for each.
For screens to look their best, all content would be color coordinated. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible – especially if you have a lot of content creators like student groups. What you can do is suggest a color palette. Instead of restricting content colors to the few that are approved in your identity guidelines, expand to 20-30 other shades that are complimentary to your layout.
Fonts shouldn’t be too restrictive. If you limit content creators to just two fonts, your content can become boring. Instead, pick 3-5 fonts that can be used for titles or callouts, and 5-10 that can be used for body text. If you want to allow more creativity, just specify fonts that shouldn’t be used. (One of our pet peeves is Comic Sans in messages unless you’re publishing at a K-12 facility).
One of the easiest ways to enforce brand guidelines across content is to provide templates. If your content management system allows it (you can design a virtually unlimited number of digital signage message templates in AxisTV, for example), go ahead and create message templates that use the colors, fonts, sizes and graphics you want. Content creators just have to fill in the blanks that way, and you can ensure that your brand standards are being upheld. This is especially helpful for recurring messages like weather, event schedules and welcomes.
By extending your brand guidelines to your digital sign content designs, you can present a consistent identity and strengthen your brand for both viewers and content creators.