Templates designed for the screen, not for paper

An A4 poster is read from fifty centimetres away, by someone who decided to read it. It can carry a paragraph, three layers of information and a footnote. A digital signage screen works under the opposite conditions: the reader is two or three metres away, hasn't stopped walking, and the content disappears after a few seconds to make room for the next one.

That difference leads to simple, largely non-negotiable rules. One main message per visual — the one thing people should remember even in passing. Letters large enough to read from a distance, which mechanically caps the word count. A sharp contrast, because the light in a lobby or a shop window has nothing to do with an office's. And an immediate hierarchy: the price, the time or the promise need to stand out before anything else.

That's why a template imported from a design tool almost always disappoints on screen. It isn't ugly: it's too dense, too fine and too wordy for the distance and the duration involved. A digital signage template builds these constraints in from the moment it's drawn, instead of fixing them afterwards.

What we look at to judge a screen template:

• a single main piece of information, identifiable effortlessly from several metres away;
• short text, where the word count is a design constraint, not an afterthought;
• contrast that holds up in a bright lobby as well as behind a shop window;
• text zones that absorb a longer-than-expected wording without breaking the layout;
• a look that stays bearable when the visual loops all day long.

A single site's screen fleet is rarely uniform: a 16:9 TV in a room, a portrait screen in a shop window, a tablet at the entrance of a meeting room, sometimes a video wall made of several panels. The same message needs to display correctly everywhere, without being redrawn each time.

But a landscape layout doesn't translate into portrait through a simple rotation. A title that fits on one line in 16:9 takes three lines in portrait, a photo framed for width loses its subject, the spacing collapses. A template that only exists in one orientation forces a full redo the moment you add a screen of a different format — and that's exactly when content starts to drift from one site to another.

A useful template therefore exists in both horizontal and vertical variants, each one purpose-built rather than automatically derived. You pick the variant matching the target screen, the message stays the same, and visual consistency holds across the whole fleet, even as it grows.

Digital signage doesn't reinvent its subjects every day. Looking at what screens actually play, a small number of recurring categories cover most needs. That's what makes a template library useful rather than decorative: it doesn't offer styles, it offers situations.

The most common cases, and therefore the best candidates for a template:

• the menu and price list, where the readability of amounts matters above everything else;
• the dated promotion, which must announce its offer and its deadline unambiguously;
• the welcome message, often personalised by name, shown at the entrance of a site or a room;
• service information: opening hours, exceptional closure, works, unavailability;
• the schedule and timetable, read standing up and from a distance, so in very large letters;
• the event announcement, which must give the date and place before anything else;
• the safety message or instruction, which allows no hesitation in reading.

A template only matters once it becomes yours. It opens in the Studio, the platform's built-in editor, where everything can be reworked directly: text, colours, images, logo. Nothing to install, no back-and-forth through an exported and reimported file.

The starting point can also be generated. The AI Studio produces a visual from a description written in plain language, and that visual can then be touched up in the Studio like any other content. Two entry points, one single production chain: you never leave the platform between the idea and the screen.

Adapting a template to an organisation's colours and logo is a basic need, not an optional finishing touch — it's what separates a professional screen from a generic one. Organisations wanting to go further, with a finely applied style guide or templates specific to a network, fall under the graphic design support of the Enterprise plan, quoted on request.