Your digital signage is only as good as the content it displays. A beautiful 4K screen showing a blurry, poorly cropped image defeats the purpose of going digital in the first place. The good news is that creating effective signage content doesn’t require a professional design team — it just requires understanding the basics of formats, resolutions, and a few design principles.
This guide covers everything you need to know to create content that looks sharp and works reliably on your displays.
One of the first questions content creators ask is: “What file types can I use?” With IntelDisplay, the answer is deliberately broad. The platform supports over 200 image formats through its Magick.NET processing engine, including:
In practice, this means you can upload directly from your phone’s camera roll, a graphic design tool, or a professional photo editor without converting files first. The platform handles the rest.
For video, IntelDisplay uses FFmpeg under the hood, which means it supports essentially every video codec in common use:
Files can be up to 3 GB in size. Uploads are chunked into 60 MB segments and are resumable, so a large promotional video won’t fail partway through if your connection hiccups. The system also uses SHA256 deduplication — if the same file is uploaded twice, it’s stored only once to conserve your storage quota.
Displays come in various resolutions and orientations, and your content should match. Here’s a quick reference:
| Resolution | Pixels (Landscape) | Pixels (Portrait) | Common Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| HD | 1280 × 720 | 720 × 1280 | 720p |
| Full HD | 1920 × 1080 | 1080 × 1920 | 1080p |
| QHD | 2560 × 1440 | 1440 × 2560 | 2K |
| 4K UHD | 3840 × 2160 | 2160 × 3840 | 4K |
Tip: Design your content at the native resolution of your display for the sharpest results. If you’re unsure, Full HD (1920 × 1080) is the safe default — it looks great on most screens and keeps file sizes manageable.
IntelDisplay automatically transcodes content for different orientations. If you upload a landscape video and assign it to a portrait display, the system creates an optimized version automatically. That said, for the best visual result, it’s always preferable to create content in the correct orientation from the start.
Digital signage is viewed from a distance — often 5 to 15 feet away. Text that looks fine on your laptop screen may be unreadable on a wall-mounted display. A good rule of thumb: headlines should be at least 60pt, and body text no smaller than 30pt. Use high-contrast color combinations (light text on dark backgrounds or vice versa).
Each screen should communicate one idea. Resist the urge to pack a slide with paragraphs of text. A promotion, a menu item, or a key message — pick one per slide and let the visuals do the heavy lifting.
Video grabs attention, but it should be purposeful. A 10-second looping clip of a product in action is more effective than a 3-minute corporate video that nobody watches to the end. Keep signage videos short — 10 to 30 seconds per clip is the sweet spot.
Some displays crop the edges of the content slightly due to overscan settings. Keep important text and graphics within the center 90% of the frame to ensure nothing gets cut off.
If you use both landscape and portrait displays, plan your content grid accordingly. Some assets work well in both orientations (centered logos, simple text), while others (wide panoramic photos, horizontal video) will need separate portrait versions.
As your content library grows, a little organization goes a long way. Use clear, descriptive file names (e.g., summer-promo-2025-landscape-1080p.mp4 rather than final_v3_FINAL.mp4). IntelDisplay’s 5 GB storage per display scales with your screen count, so a 20-display deployment has 100 GB of cloud storage available.
Great content is the difference between a digital sign that people notice and one they ignore. Start with the right formats and resolution, keep your designs clean and readable, and take advantage of the platform’s automatic transcoding to simplify your workflow.
Need help getting started? Contact our team and we’ll help you plan your content strategy.