When designing digital signage, it is easy to get carried away by the excitement of having to create and experiment with elements like contrast, color, text, arrangements and images. You should, however, not forget that the point of the whole graphic design process, when it comes to digital signage, is to impart a message to an audience in a most effective and actionable manner.
It is, therefore, important to know some of the more important design rules that you will have to adhere to as you create content in order to be effective at your objective. These are the elements that professional graphic design and digital signage companies like https://www.dopublicity.com/ employ.
1. Legibility and contrast
The background and the foreground of a digital signage should always be distinct from each other if you want your content to be legible. In essence, the more distinct the different elements of your content are, the more legible they will be and therefore the more impact the digital signage will have. Distinctions between text and other types of content should also be made clear using contrast.
2. The three by five rule
The three by five rule is an important graphic design rule that creates a template for how much text a message should contain. The rule basically means that you should not have more than three lines of text each with five words at most or five lines of text each with three words at most.
This rule is important so that graphic designer can have a clear and concise message in mind that is not cluttered. When fewer words are used, the graphic designer is also forced to use larger fonts which are very useful for easy legibility by an audience.
3. Simple typesetting
An important consideration when doing graphic design is to use effective typesetting. When it comes to digital signage, effective typesetting means:
- Not confusing the audience with too many different fonts. (More than two fonts is often too many)
- Using italics sparingly
- Improving legibility by using bold and large font sizes
- Using sans serif fonts, like Arial, when it comes to short messages
4. Proper use of color and perception
Being able to integrate different color elements in order to tell a story with the color alone is quite a useful skill for a graphic designer. This is especially the case when a customer’s brand that has its distinct colors needs to be used in a digital signage message.
5. Creating a visual hierarchy
Creating a visual hierarchy is an important part of graphic design and digital signage process because it automatically gives a viewer of the content an area to focus on, before spreading their attention to other less important aspects of the content. This can be easily managed through the use of:
- Graphics
- Angles
- Open space
- Headlines
- High contrast
- Bright colors
6. Previewing all the elements together
Once you have put together all the single elements into a single piece of work, previewing the work so that you can confirm that it is consistent with the message that you had in mind is very important. You should ensure that no single design element overwhelms the other elements and therefore distorts the message.
