Digital signage in your lobby or office is a highly effective way to grab the attention of visitors, promote upcoming events, and share critical programmatic information. Creating polished, professional visuals for these displays is easy with Canva, even if you do not have any prior design experience.

Because digital billboards are meant to be read quickly from a distance, keeping your content highly visual and uncluttered is key.

How to Create and Publish Your Digital Sign

Follow these step-by-step instructions to design your slide in Canva and upload it to our Extension web ecosystem.

1. Create - Log into Canva, click Create a design in the top-left corner, and select Custom size. Enter 1920 for the width and 1080 for the height, and ensure the unit dropdown is set to px (pixels). This layout is perfectly optimized for our widescreen digital signs.
2. Build Your Visual Design - Use ready-made layouts and built-in Extension brand colors, fonts, and logos in the Extension Brand Kit to stay consistent. Keep text brief and font sizes large so it can be read quickly from a distance.
3. Download Your Completed Design - Click Share in the top right, click Download, set the file type to PNG or JPG, and save it to your computer.
4. Upload to Signage Web Application - Managing content on a digital sign is accomplished through our web application.
   1. County Digital Signage tool
   2. Log in with your Unity ID to upload your image and set its display schedule.

A Note on Accessibility and Best Practices

Skip the QR Codes: QR codes make a great addition to printed flyers or static PowerPoint presentations, but they do not make much sense on high-up digital signage or rotating lobby boards where users may not have time to walk up and scan them before the screen changes. Stick to simple, memorable short URLs instead.

Use embedded text judiciously: Remember that text embedded within an image format (like a PNG or JPG) cannot be read by assistive screen readers. While this is fine for physical, wall-mounted display screens in a lobby, if you decide to repurpose this same graphic on your county website or in an ActiveCampaign newsletter later on, you must include the text information in a plain-text format alongside the design so it remains fully accessible.

More information

• Canva Enterprise
• Creating On-Brand Designs with Canva Enterprise
• Digital Signage