Creating Layouts | easyCMS Digital Signage

A layout is the design your screen actually shows: the arrangement of zones, media and widgets that makes up your signage. You can keep it as simple as one full-screen video, or divide the screen into several regions, a main content area, a news ticker along the bottom, a clock and logo in a corner. This article covers the layout editor from creation to publishing.

Choosing a resolution and orientation

When you create a layout, pick the resolution that matches the screen it will play on, layouts look best when their dimensions match the display exactly. For most screens that means 1920×1080 (Full HD landscape). For a screen mounted vertically, choose a portrait resolution such as 1080×1920 instead; the layout editor canvas then becomes tall rather than wide, and you design directly in that orientation. easyCMS also supports 4K layouts if your playback hardware can handle them.

A layout designed in one orientation will be scaled to fit a mismatched display, usually with black bars, so it is worth creating separate portrait and landscape versions of important designs rather than reusing one for both.

Working with regions

Regions (also called zones) are the rectangular areas of the layout that hold content:

Create a new layout and set its background, a solid colour or a full-size background image works well as the base of the design.
Add a region and drag it into position, or use the snapping guides to align it precisely with edges and other regions.
Resize it by dragging its handles, or type exact coordinates and dimensions for pixel-perfect placement.
Repeat for each zone you need, for example a large main region, a narrow ticker strip and a small logo box.

Each region plays its content independently. A region containing several items cycles through them in order like a mini playlist, while other regions carry on with their own content.

Adding widgets

Widgets are the content items inside regions. The toolbox includes:

Library media: images, videos and audio uploaded to your Media Library.
Text and clock widgets: headlines, announcements, date and time.
Live content: RSS tickers, weather, calendars, web pages and embedded HTML.
Data-driven widgets: tables and tickers fed from DataSets, covered in Dynamic content with DataSets.

Drag a widget into a region and set its duration, how long it holds the screen before the region moves to its next item. Give some thought to timing across regions: if your main region changes every 10 seconds, a ticker that scrolls continuously alongside it feels natural.

Previewing your work

Use the built-in preview (the play button in the editor) to watch the layout run in your browser before it ever reaches a screen. Preview catches most issues, overlapping regions, text that is too small to read at a distance, media in the wrong aspect ratio, far more cheaply than discovering them on the shop floor.

Draft, publish and edit safely

Layouts have two states. A draft can be edited freely but never appears on screens. Only a published layout plays on displays. When you edit an already-published layout, easyCMS checks it out as a new draft copy, the published version keeps playing untouched while you work, and your changes go live only when you publish again. This means you can safely rework a live layout during business hours.

Once published, the layout is ready to be scheduled to your displays or set as a display’s default layout.

Design tips for signage

Text on a screen is read from metres away, go far bigger than feels natural on a monitor.
High contrast between text and background wins in bright environments.
Keep each layout to one message where possible; rotate several layouts rather than cramming one.