Creating a creative

A menu, an offer or a notice, drawn on the spot from a template and saved as an HTML5 creative that plays on every television you have — with the prices in it yours to change whenever they change.

Why it existsMost of what a shop puts on a screen is words and prices: today’s bake, this week’s offers, the classes on Tuesday. A photograph of a printed menu goes out of date the day a price does, and a designer is a week away. The editor puts the thing that changes daily in the hands of whoever runs the place, and what comes out is not a picture but a document: sharp at any size, light to fetch, and kept by the television so that it plays with no network at all.

Where it is#

Create is in the Media Library, beside Upload file. A creative that was made in the editor hasEdit design in its window, which opens it again exactly as it was left.

Media Library

Add widgetCreateUpload file

Start from a template#

There are more than ninety templates for twenty-six kinds of business — supermarkets and food shops, fashion, perfume and cosmetics, jewellery, electronics, home and garden, sports, toys, books, pet shops, florists, opticians and shopping centres, as well as cafés, restaurants, bars, salons, gyms, pharmacies, hotels, estate agents, garages, offices, schools and events — each drawn for a landscape screen and again for a portrait one. Choose the kind of business from the list above them. A template is a finished drawing with example words in it: choose one, and replace the words with yours. The words are English and the prices are in pounds, whichever language you read the dashboard in; they are there to be replaced.

Double-click any words to change them where they stand. Drag anything to move it; pull a corner to make it larger.
Everything a thing is — its typeface, colour, size, how it arrives — is in the panel on the right when it is chosen. The stage’s own size, background and seconds on screen are there when nothing is.
Undo goes back through everything you did, a template included.
Most templates come with photographs — free to use and already inside the creative. To use your own, choose the photograph, then Another picture in the panel on the right.

What can go on the stage#

Words, in fifteen typefaces, with a colour, a shadow, or a panel behind them.
Pictures, from your computer or from the Media Library. A picture is made to fit the stage as it comes in and kept inside the creative, so a photograph from a telephone does not make the creative as heavy as the photograph.
Shapes and icons — a hundred line icons for food, drink, beauty, sport, health and the rest.
A menu or a price list: sections, items, prices and a note under each, in one or several columns. See below.
A clock and a date that show the television’s own time, in the language you choose.
A QR code for an address or any words.
Movement: anything can arrive — fade in, rise, grow, pop — and then breathe, float or turn. A background picture can drift slowly, like a camera.

Menus and prices#

A menu is one thing on the stage, moved and sized as a whole. What is in it is edited as a list: the sections, the items, the prices, and a note under any item. Each section is told which column it stands in, so a menu looks the same on the television as on the stage. When the items no longer fit the box, the panel says by how much.

Note

The prices belong to the creative. A shop whose prices differ between two places makes two creatives — Save as a new creative makes the second from the first in one click — and gives each to the playlist of its place.

Saving, and what happens next#

Save puts the creative in the Media Library, as an HTML5 creative like any other: it goes into playlists and schedules, and shows in the reports, exactly as an uploaded file does.
Saving again changes the same creative. Every screen that plays it has the change the next time it asks for its schedule, within five minutes, and without a flash: the new version begins at the next loop.
It plays with no network. A television keeps the creative once it has fetched it, with its pictures and typefaces inside, and goes on playing it through an outage.

Older televisions#

A creative is drawn the same on every television ScreenRoll plays on, back to the 2017 models, because it is written for the oldest of them. Two things are better on a newer one, and the editor says so: the blur behind a glass panel, which a television made before 2021 draws as a plain panel, and a weight of type between regular and bold, which one made before 2019 draws as one or the other. Preview shows the creative both ways — Newer televisions and Older televisions — and lists what will differ, if anything will.

Limits#

12 MB for a creative, pictures included. A picture is brought down to 2,560 pixels on its longer side as it comes in, which is more than a 4K screen needs of it.
200 things on a stage, and a stage between 100 and 8,000 pixels a side.
An uploaded HTML5 file cannot be opened in the editor. Only what the editor made carries its drawing inside it.

Example — The lunch board

Crustum picks the Coffee menu template, double-clicks “Flat white £3.40” and types £3.60, drags the bakery’s name into the corner and presses Save. The creative goes into the Camden playlist. For Manchester, where a flat white is £3.20, they open it, press Save as a new creative, change the one price, and give that copy to the Manchester playlist. When the milk goes up in the spring, each is opened, changed and saved — no upload, no designer, and every screen has it within five minutes.