In the world of internal communications, capturing and maintaining employee attention is a constant challenge. Digital signage offers a powerful platform to disseminate information, reinforce company culture, and boost engagement. However, simply displaying content isn’t enough. To truly resonate with your audience, your digital signage needs a cohesive and visually compelling presentation. This is where the power of a custom digital signage theme comes into play.
While readily available stock themes and templates might seem like a quick solution, they often fall short of delivering a truly impactful experience. A custom digital signage theme allows you to create a unique visual identity that aligns perfectly with your brand, enhances engagement, and optimizes your overall communication strategy. This article will explore the critical benefits of custom themes and guide you through the process of creating or commissioning one that elevates your internal communications to the next level.
Themes vs. Templates: Understanding the Difference
Before diving into the advantages of custom themes, it’s crucial to understand the distinction between themes and templates. While often used interchangeably, they serve different purposes:
- Theme: A digital signage theme is the overarching visual style that dictates the overall look and feel of your displayed messages. It encompasses a collection of coordinated elements, including:
- Layouts: The arrangement of content zones, logo placement, date, time, weather, and tickers on screen. Think of it as the blueprint for your display.
- Layout Backgrounds: The background artwork and colors that provide the canvas for your content.
- Message Backgrounds: Specific background artwork and colors used for individual messages.
- Font Choices: The typography used for headings, body text, and other on-screen elements.
- Color Palettes: The specific set of colors used throughout the theme to ensure visual harmony.
- Template: A digital signage template is a pre-designed message layout with specific placeholders for content. It includes background images, image sizes and ratios, text and image blocks, font styles, and call-to-action zones. Content creators simply “fill in the blanks” with their information, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Templates work within a theme.
Think of it this way: the theme is the overall aesthetic style (e.g., modern, minimalist, corporate), while the template is a specific application of that style to a particular message type (e.g., company news, event promotion, employee spotlight).
Why Choose a Custom Theme?
While stock themes offer a starting point, they often lack the polish and personalization needed to truly capture your brand’s essence. A custom digital signage theme, on the other hand, provides several key advantages:
- Reinforced Brand Identity: Your brand is more than just a logo; it’s a visual language that communicates your values and personality. A custom theme ensures that your digital signage aligns seamlessly with your overall brand identity, reinforcing brand recognition and creating a cohesive experience for your employees. Imagine a financial institution using a calming palette of blues and greens, paired with clean, professional fonts, versus a tech startup using vibrant colors and bold typography. The custom theme reflects the specific brand.
- Elevated Audience Engagement: A well-designed custom theme is visually appealing and engaging, capturing attention and encouraging employees to interact with the displayed content. Strategic use of color, typography, and layout can guide viewers’ eyes, prioritize key messages, and make even complex information more digestible. For example, a custom theme can incorporate subtle animations or interactive elements to draw the eye and make the content more dynamic.
- Optimized Information Architecture: A custom theme allows you to strategically organize information on your screens. By carefully considering layout, content zoning, and visual hierarchy, you can ensure that key messages are prominently displayed, and that information is presented in a clear and logical manner. This is especially crucial for internal comms, where employees need to quickly access important updates and announcements.
- Enhanced Accessibility: A custom theme can be designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring that your digital signage is inclusive and usable by everyone. This includes considerations for color contrast, font sizes, screen reader compatibility, and multi-lingual formats. For instance, a custom theme might use high contrast color combinations to improve readability for visually impaired employees.
- Seamless Content Integration: A custom theme can be designed to seamlessly integrate with various content types, including text, images, videos, and data feeds. This allows you to create a dynamic and engaging experience that caters to different learning styles and keeps your audience interested. For example, a theme can be designed to dynamically pull in real-time data from internal systems, such as sales figures or project milestones, and display them in a visually appealing way.
- Increased Content Creation Efficiency: While the initial investment in a custom theme might be higher, it can save time and resources in the long run. Once the theme is established, content creators can easily use pre-designed templates that adhere to the brand guidelines, ensuring consistency and streamlining the content creation process.
- Long-Term Flexibility and Scalability: A custom theme provides greater flexibility and scalability as your organization grows and evolves. You can easily update the theme to reflect changes in your brand identity or incorporate new features and functionalities as needed.
The Custom Theme Design Process: A Collaborative Approach
Creating a successful custom digital signage theme requires a collaborative approach between your internal communications team, designers, and potentially a specialized digital signage agency. Here’s a general overview of the process:
- Needs Assessment: Begin by defining your goals and objectives for your digital signage. What key messages do you want to communicate? Who is your target audience? What kind of experience do you want to create?
- Brand Guidelines Review: Thoroughly review your existing brand guidelines, including logo usage, color palettes, typography, and messaging. This will serve as the foundation for your custom theme.
- Conceptualization and Design: Work with designers to develop initial concepts for your theme. This may involve creating mood boards, wireframes, and mockups to visualize the look and feel of your signage.
- Development and Testing: Once the design is finalized, the theme is developed and rigorously tested across different screens and devices to ensure optimal performance and compatibility.
- Implementation and Training: The custom theme is implemented on your digital signage platform, and your content creators are trained on how to use the new templates and guidelines.
- Ongoing Maintenance and Updates: Regularly review and update your theme to ensure it remains relevant and effective.
Professional vs. DIY: Choosing the Right Approach
While DIY solutions might seem tempting, creating a truly effective custom digital signage theme requires expertise in design, user experience, and digital signage technology. A professional agency, like Visix, brings years of experience and specialized knowledge to the table, ensuring that your theme is not only visually appealing but also strategically designed to achieve your communication goals.
Having said that, you can certainly create your own digital signage themes. Here are a few tips:
Keep it simple: Don’t try to create a theme that is too complex. A simple theme will be easier to create and maintain.
Use your brand colors: Your brand colors are one of the most important elements of your brand identity. Be sure to use your brand colors in your digital signage theme.
Choose easy-to-read fonts: The fonts you use in your digital signage theme should be easy to read from a distance. Avoid using fonts that are too small or too ornate.
Use high-quality images: The images you use in your digital signage theme should be high-quality and relevant to your message.
Be consistent: Once you have created a digital signage theme, be sure to use it consistently across all of your signage. This will help to create a more professional look and feel for your brand.
Extend Brand Guidelines to Digital Sign Content Designs
Your brand guidelines are a document that outlines your brand identity. They include your logo, colors, fonts, messaging, and imagery. It’s important to extend your brand guidelines to your digital sign content designs, and you can usually get these from your marketing department.
Here are some tips for extending your brand guidelines to your digital sign content designs:
- Use your brand colors: These colors are the most instantly recognizable parts of your branding, so use them in your templates.
- Use your brand fonts: You may use certain fonts in your branding as well, so these should be included in templates.
- Use your brand messaging: Create templates that make it easy for you to maintain a consistent voice throughout all your materials.
- Use your brand imagery: Mascots or other images used in your branding can also be included in content and templates for more instantaneous brand recognition.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your digital sign content designs are consistent with your brand identity and that they help to create a positive impression of your brand.
The Takeaway
With so many distractions today, it’s more important than ever to capture attention quickly and also remain consistent. A custom digital signage theme is the perfect tool for creating visually compelling communications that engage your audience. You can reinforce your brand identity, enhance accessibility and overall improve the effectiveness of your internal communications.