Introduction

How it all works

It’s the dream of every marketing team to have a design budget big enough to encompass a team of designers, a suite of editing tools, and limitless reserves of time to spend crafting and updating content. If only.

The good news is you don’t have to be a design expert or shell out hundreds of bucks on design software suites in order to come up with great-looking & dynamic content for your digital signage.

With Fugo’s native design studio, you can craft content in minutes without having to leave for 3rd party tools to make things like digital menus, posters, dashboards & more.

Design content in the right screen format

Fugo helps you create content that’s ‘screen-ready’ in real-time while you’re working in the canvas, so you don’t have to worry about your media getting stretched, shrunk, or not fitted to your screen dimensions or resolutions. Your content is optimized for landscape or portrait mode.

Update content quickly & easily

Need to fix a mistake in your screen content? Replace a video? Remove an app from the playlist? It only takes a moment to update your content and see the changes reflected on screen instantly.

Zone your screen

Although multi-zone displays may not be the best option for every deployment, in the right situation these displays can turn an often tired or static display into several powerful tools for engaging consumers.

Create independent content carousels inside screen zones

This important element of the design studio (and what makes it so incredibly unique) is the ability to create content carousels within different zones of your screen. Think of it like having separate playlists that loop through in independent portions of your screen.

Maintain brand consistency

With Fugo, you can ensure that every piece of content you create is on-brand. Set custom colors and upload your brand assets with ease.

Start with a template

Your design resources are probably already strained, which is why we’ve built an ever-growing library of content templates. Designed with several use cases in mind and optimized to be screen-ready, anything in our templates can be customized & you never have to call on a professional designer for help.
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Duration refers to how long an item will display inside a playlist or carousel. You’ll have the option to set this in the settings controls for each media and app instance on your canvas.

Position refers to an element’s alignment on the canvas as well as its position relative to layers (i.e. in front of or behind other elements in the design.)

Similar to commands on your computer or alternative photo editing tools, you can right-click any item in the canvas to quickly remove, re-position, or duplicate it.

Here’s an overview of keyboard commands you can use in Fugo Studio, respective to your platform (e.g. Windows or macOS):

Copy - ctrl + c or cmd + c

Paste - ctrl + v or cmd + v

Undo - ctrl + z or cmd + z

Redo - ctrl + shift + z or cmd + shift + z

Bold - ctrl + b or cmd + b

Underline - ctrl + u or cmd + u

Italicize - ctrl + i or cmd + i

Group objects - hold the shift key while selecting your objects (alternatively, hold the Cmd key on macOS or Ctrl key on Windows)

1. Log into your Fugo account. If you don’t have one yet, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.

2. To get to your studio content library, click Studio in the top navigation bar. From there you can view all of your existing content or click Create in Studio to open a new design canvas.

If you want to open up a new canvas in the design studio straight away from anywhere in Fugo CMS, click the purple Create button in the top navigation bar and select Content.

1. You can navigate to Templates via the top navigation bar. We have templates designed for most industries - scroll through and find one you are interested in. Clicking on the template will open it in the studio.

2. You can also access the template library while your canvas is open from the left-hand content settings panel:

Once you’ve selected the template you can make changes to it such as adding your own logos, editing texts, changing colors, and adding, removing or replacing items. We’ll cover how to do those things in the next section: Create a design from scratch.

Ahh, a blank canvas. Exciting! (or nerve-wracking, if you don’t know where to begin. Not to worry, we’re here to guide you.)

There is a near-endless variety of design options available for creating & editing Studio content. If we were to cover them all, you’d never get through this guide, so we will focus on the main functions inside the studio & detail a bit about how they work.

If needed, you’ll find the screen format & resolution settings in the top panel above the canvas:

Landscape & portrait icons allow you to switch between horizontal and vertical screen formatting.

You can also change the resolution and the sizing of your canvas to match that of your screen by selecting from the options available from the drop-down menu or use Custom for your own sizing.

These settings are particularly helpful if you'll be designing content for a multi-screen video wall. If that's you, we recommend you check our this guide for design video wall content in Fugo!

To add your own uploaded media to your canvas, click Uploads in your settings panel and select the image, video, or audio file you want to add.

If it’s not in your library already, you can upload it via the media picker:

If you want to add a stock image to your design, you can click Media in the settings panel & search for what you need. Results will return images, videos, and gifs related to your search query.

You can make adjustments to your media in the settings panel to the left:

Users on the Core & Enterprise plans also have the option to set the dimensions of their media to better match their screen resolution. These settings may help you preempt issues you might have with Studio content mismatching screen resolution or displaying incorrectly on screen.

They may also help you build content for screens & video walls that are being controlled by LED controller software. More on that below.

To enable dimension & coordinate settings:

Change your canvas resolution to Custom. You can set this to your screen or video wall's resolution, but you don't need to change the values just to enable the dimension settings.

Once you've set your screen resolution to Custom, you'll see the Dimension & Coordinate settings appear when you click on your media:

Media dimensions and pixel coordinates play a crucial role in effectively managing content on video walls and LED displays. These settings allow you to create inputs (or layers) that serve as containers for video or image data, which can then be mapped to outputs (screens) in a video wall setup.

Optimizing video wall content:

Managing multiple outputs:

Versatile content display:

An LED controller will facilitate the management of inputs and outputs. Here’s how you can use the Design Studio settings with your controller:

Defining output regions:

Example scenario:

Single media player efficiency:

Clicking the Text Box icon in the top white panel above the canvas is one way to add text to your canvas.

You can reposition any text by dragging and dropping it anywhere on your canvas. You can also resize the text field by dragging the text box’s corners to make it larger or smaller.

Using the top settings panel, you can customize how your text appears by changing the color, font type, size, alignment, size, and letter case. You can also reduce the opacity of your text and move its position behind or in front of other objects on your canvas.

Click on Text in the left-hand panel to open up our library of pre-made custom font combinations & add one to your slide. Also in the left-hand panel are the settings for your text effects.

You can add shapes to your design. The current shapes available include circles, triangles, rectangles, and lines. This is a great way to create an image background or badge, to help different elements stand out within your design.

You can change the color and size of shapes, the border thickness, round the corners, and change the opacity.

Apps are a great way to connect your screen to some of your favorite business tools as well as create content that can refresh & update on its own.

Adding apps to your content works the same as adding media. Select the app you want to add from the Apps library in the settings panel. Add it to your canvas. Resize and reposition as you want, then change the settings in the left-hand panel.

In my example, I’ve added the QR code app to insert a code my audience can scan to quickly get to where I want them to go.

You may be using Fugo's TV Dashboards feature to display secure dashboards & reports on your TV screens.

If you have saved dashboards in your Dashboards library, you can easily add them to your Design Studio canvas to start customizing a slide show of your dashboards or a single dashboard display.

Click Dashboards from the left-hand settings panel to pull up your dashboards and add them to your canvas.

There are all sorts of ways to customize and enrich your dashboard display to reflect your company branding or include additional apps & design embellishments for your slides. You can check out some ideas & options for customizing your dashboard display here 🎨

We also have a handy cropping feature that allows you to crop out unwanted elements of your saved dashboard from the display. To see how that works, jump down the next section: Cropping content (apps, media & dashboards) 👇 .

The cropping feature is helpful for ensuring the right parts of your content are displayed on screen. In our example below, we'll be cropping a dashboard, but cropping can be used with any element on your canvas such as media & even apps!

Here's how it works:

1. Add your content to the canvas on your slide from the left-hand settings panel. We've added a dashboard from our Dashboards library in our example.
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2. We suggest zooming out a bit to give you more space to work with when cropping. There is a zoom setting in the top navigation bar, and you can also use the trackpad on your laptop to zoom in & out.

3. Select the crop icon from the top tool bar.

This will reveal two crop box outlines around your content that enable different cropping functions:

The blue crop box can be used to crop out elements of your content & set the frame for the container:

The purple crop box can be used to stretch and shrink your content container and move it around to set its position within the frame:

Cropping is an especially great way to make your dashboards more digestible on screen without reconfiguring them or saving new dashboard views inside your data platform!

Check out the slideshow we created, showcasing each cropped chart individually 👇

Frames allow you to crop photos, videos, and apps to their shape.

To add a frame, click Frames in the left-hand settings panel. Click your chosen frame to add it to your canvas. Resize & reposition as you want, then drag and drop any of the following into your frame from the side panel:

In my example, I’ve added a photo to my frame to put a face to my employee testimonial that my audience can recognize & relate to:

You can use the settings panel to the right to readjust the contents of the frame: reposition it horizontally or vertically, or zoom in or out:

Any object on your canvas can be animated. You’ll find the animation settings in the left-hand panel after selecting an object:

Choose the Entrance Animation from the drop-down panel.

Use the Delay field to set how many seconds pass before your object enters the canvas.

In my example, I’ve set my texts to enter after 0 seconds, my rectangle & QR code to enter after 1 second, and my frame & photo to enter after 3 seconds.

Use the Duration field to speed up or slow down the pace of the animation.

If you want to preview all the animations of your slide from beginning to end, you can click onto another slide, then back on the slide you’ve animated:

A zoned screen is just a screen that has been split into zones to accommodate different pieces of content.

In Fugo Studio, zones are not preconfigured or arranged, so there really is no limit to how many objects you can add to your screen and how you can arrange them (though we would recommend sticking to a relatively modest amount - nobody can focus on a screen that’s too busy.)

Simply start adding objects to your canvas, sizing them, and positioning them around your screen. That’s it!

In my example here, I’ve split my screen into two zones containing a social media wall made with Walls.io & and a display of the date made with the Calendar apps, respectively.

Fugo Studio is the first digital signage design editor of its kind to make use of what are known as containers.

Containers are self contained content carousels within a screen that's been split into zones. They allow you to create a carousel of different apps or media within one zone of your screen, while another zone of your screen might contain its own carousel. Think of it like having playlists for different portions of your screens.

Currently, you can add the following elements into carousels:

To create a carousel, just drag an element from the settings panel onto the canvas until the white box appears over the container you want to add it to, then drop it into the white box.

Your timeline will appear underneath your canvas when you create a carousel, and displays the order of your content in that carousel. You can use the timeline to reorder items in the carousel or change their duration.

In my example, I’ve added a dashboard to create a carousel with my social media wall, BBC News feed, and Looker dashboard:

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If you've got touch-enabled displays and tablets, you can use Fugo's touch feature to create simple touch flows to navigate your audience through your slides.

It's great for building interactive presentations for things like simple product directories, wayfinding, or employee information portals.

You can make any element on your slide touchable, and use the touch settings to determine where your audience will be navigated within your slideshow once they touch that element.

Touch settings for your selected element are found in the left hand settings panel:

Dive deeper into how to set up interactive touch flows in this guide!

Once you’re happy with your content, it’s time to save & publish it!

1. We recommend giving it a name so that you can easily find it when adding to a playlist.

2. Click Save & Close. This will take you back to your studio content library. You can publish right away or come back to it later.

3. When you’re ready to publish, locate your content in the library. Then click the More drop down menu and hit Publish.

4. Choose an existing Screen, Channel, or Playlist to add it to. If you haven’t created any or you’d like to create a new screen/channel/playlist to add your content to, you’ll see the option to now.

You can read more about using the playlist builder here.

When it comes to content, the Fugo team is absolutely committed to helping you bring amazing ideas to your screens.

If you have an idea for a template you’d like us to add to our library, you can request for us to build it here.

If your organization is planning a project deployment and need help with content strategizing, you can contact our Professional Services team at proservices@fugo.ai.

Our support team is reachable at support@fugo.ai and our sales team at sales@fugo.ai if you have any questions about getting started with your project!

📺 Happy publishing!