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Design your own slides

Templates, the editor, your brand kit and the design assistant.

Design is where you make your own menus, promotions and info screens for your TVs, without another app. Start from a template, from a sentence, or from the menu you already have. Change anything, preview it on your own screens, and publish it in one step. Prices can stay linked to your menus, so a price change reaches every design by itself.

Design's Home

Open Design from the bar down the side. The first time, you'll see Make your first design and three ways to start:

• Upload a Menu: turn the menu you already have into TV designs. See Turn your menu into designs.
• Describe a Design: say what you want in a sentence and AI makes three designs to pick from. See Describe a design.
• Browse Templates: menus, promotions and info screens, ready for one TV, two TVs or a portrait screen. See Templates.

Once you've made a design, Home also has:

• Describe what you want on your screens: type a sentence, pick a Size, leave Use my brand and Prices from your menu ticked, and press Generate.
• Start something new: quick tiles like Restaurant Menu, Two-TV Menu and Portrait Poster that open the right templates.
• Continue editing: your latest designs. All Designs opens My Designs.
• Suggested for your business: ideas from your screens, your menus and the calendar, like a coming holiday.
• Your Brand Kit, your latest uploads and your saved templates.

Start a design in any size

Create a Design, at the top of Design's side panel, starts an empty design in a size you pick: one of your own screens (it knows if a screen has two TVs or a portrait TV), One TV (1920 × 1080), Two TVs side by side (3840 × 1080), Portrait TV (1080 × 1920), a Social post, a Story, a Flyer to print (Letter) or a Custom size. Start Blank on Home starts one the size of your first screen.

Templates

Templates shows every template as a card. Every word, photo and color stays editable, and prices can link to your menus. To find one:

• Pick a kind of business at the top, like Restaurant & Hospitality, Cafés & Drinks, Churches & Faith or Clinics & Health.
• Search, like happy hour or opening.
• Narrow by Format (One TV, Two TVs, Portrait TV, Square post, Banner) and Style (Dark, Light, Bold, Photo-led, Words only).
• Under Show, choose Animated templates, or the ones you've Saved.
• Sort by Best for your business, Newest or Most used.

If nothing matches your words, Pixigns offers to describe it instead, and AI makes three designs for them.

Preview a template, then customize it

1. Open a template. It's shown on your own screens: pick one to see it across two TVs or on a portrait TV.
2. Under Fill it with, choose one of your menus, so its names and prices drop straight in and stay linked, or Sample words to type over. With a menu, the preview says how well it fits, like All 12 items fit at 26 px or larger.
3. Leave Use my brand on to use your brand kit's colors and fonts.
4. For an animated template, press Play Motion to see it move.
5. Press Customize This Template. It becomes a design of your own, open in the editor.

Save a template for later from its card; it then shows under Saved and on Home.

Make your own templates

Have a flyer, poster or menu board you like? Press Upload Your Design and add a photo (JPG or PNG) or a PDF of it. AI copies its words and takes them out of the artwork, so every word becomes text you can change. This takes about a minute and uses 2 AI requests. It then shows in Your Templates. Check that each line of words sits where it should.

You can also save any design of your own as a template, from its menu in My Designs.

Describe a design

Say what you want, and AI designs around your items, your brand and your menu.

1. Open Describe (or type on Home), and say it in a sentence, like 20% off pizzas this weekend.
2. Press Generate. This uses one AI request.
3. AI offers three directions, each a layout, colors, fonts and words. On each, press Use This to open it in the editor, or More Like This for three more in that direction. Make Three More asks for three new ones.

Turn your menu into designs

Upload a Menu (also Upload & Transform on Home, and Upload a Menu in Menus) turns the menu you already have into designs for your TVs.

1. Read your menu. Upload a PDF, a photo, a Word or Excel file, a CSV or text, up to 50 MB. A flat, well-lit photo works as well as a PDF, and several pages are fine. AI copies every item, price and description word for word. A sheet with the same columns as a menu sheet is read as it is.
2. Check the items. Fix anything that's off. Where AI couldn't read something, it marks it [?] and asks you. It never fills in a price. You can't save until Everything checked.
3. Save it to Menus. Press Save to Menus & Continue, so every design and screen uses the same prices. If it matches a menu you already have, you can update that one instead, and Pixigns shows what changes.
4. Choose a look. Pick a layout made for menus, describe one, or recreate the look of a picture you like, or of your printed menu.
5. Fill & fit. Your items are placed on your TVs, with nothing in the gap between two TVs. Choose the Smallest text, and Pixigns keeps every word that size or bigger. When a menu doesn't fit, it adds a slide instead of making the words smaller.
6. Customize & publish in the editor.

If a file can't be read, Pixigns says so, and Nothing was saved and no AI request was used.

The editor

The editor fills the window. Your design is in the middle, with its slides below. The tools are down the left side, and the settings for whatever you select are on the right.

Working on a design

• Click something to select it. Drag it to move it, and drag a corner to resize it.
• On the right, change its settings: words, font, weight, alignment and shadow for text; fit, filter and a soft edge for photos; and more for each kind.
• Press Undo and Redo at the top to step back and forward.
• Your design saves as you go. If a save doesn't get through, you'll see Couldn't save · trying again; Pixigns keeps trying, and nothing is lost while the window stays open. If someone changed the design in another tab, you'll see Couldn't save · reload to see the newest.
• Click the design's name at the top to rename it.
• The size button at the top shows the design's size. Use Make another size to make copies for your other screens, an Instagram post or a flyer, rearranged to fit, with the same words, prices and brand.

Prices from your menu

Add an item's price or name from one of your menus and it stays linked. Change a price in the design and it changes in Menus too, and on every design and screen within a minute, without publishing. Pixigns confirms it, like Soup is $6.50 on your menu. Screens showing it update within a minute.

When an item is sold out, its price on the design shows Sold out. Turn off Show “Sold out” when it is on that price if you'd rather keep showing the price.

Designs across two TVs

On a design for two TVs, Pixigns watches the gap between the TVs. If words or a photo sit across it, you're told it's across the gap between your TVs, with a button to move it onto one TV. Once it's fixed, you'll see Nothing crosses the gap now.

Live elements

Under Elements, Live elements are drawn by the screen itself, so they're always current: a Clock, Today's date, a QR code to your online menu or a link, the Weather, a Countdown, Scrolling text and a Calendar. The weather and calendars need the screen to be online. See Live content.

AI in the editor

• Assistant: press Assistant at the top and say what to change in your own words, like Add our late hours. Pixigns shows what changed; keep it or undo it. AI changes the design's elements, never your menu's prices, and you review everything before it reaches a screen.
• Rewrite with AI: new words for a title or a line.
• Make a photo with AI and Make a background with AI: describe it, like a bowl of soup on a wooden table. It shows in a moment.
• For a photo on the slide, Remove Background takes the background away, and Extend the Photo to Fit widens it to fill its space.

How much AI you can use

The editor's Photos panel shows how many photos are left today. When the day's AI requests are used up, Pixigns says You've used today's 30 AI requests. They come back the next day. Templates and the editor still work, and an owner can choose Premium in Settings, under Billing, for more. Your words in Describe are kept for when they're back.

Preview on your TVs

Press Preview to see the design on your own screens before it's published.

• On the wall: how it looks where people stand, with each TV labeled, like Left TV and Right TV.
• Exactly as sent: each TV's own picture, with its size, like Left TV · 1920 × 1080.
• Look from Up close, From the counter (about 2 m, 6 ft) or From the door (about 6 m, 20 ft). Pixigns points out words too small to read from there, like Badge words are hard to read from the door. It uses your TVs' size from Screen Details.

Publish a design

Press Publish in the editor. In three steps:

1. Choose screens. Tick the screens to show it on. A portrait screen needs a portrait copy of the design: press the button to make one, or leave that screen out.
2. How it plays. Each slide shows for 10 or 20 seconds, or as set in the design, with a Fade or a cut between slides. Then choose Play it instead of what's on now or Add it to what's playing.
3. When. Right Away, and screens pick it up the next time they check in, usually within 20 seconds. Or On a Schedule: when it Starts and Ends, and which days and hours. Outside those hours, the screens go back to what they play now.

You can close the window while it publishes; the top bar shows when it's done. For each screen you'll see Sending…, then Showing now once the screen has it, or Scheduled. A screen that hasn't answered says Didn't answer for 5 minutes; see Troubleshooting.

Changed your mind? Press Undo, Take It Off. The screens go back to what they played before. The screens' playlists also keep their history, so you can go back in Playlists, under History. See Publish and roll back.

After you change a published design

Once a design is on your screens, its changes go out when you choose Update the playlists it's in in Publish. Prices and sold out from a linked menu don't need this: they change on the TVs within a minute by themselves.

Screens on older Player software show each slide as a still picture, with prices as they were when published. See Manage your screens for your screens' software.

My Designs

My Designs lists everything your business has made, with where each one is playing. Search by name, or put designs in folders. Open one to see:

• Its size and slides, like 1920 × 1080 · one TV · 1 slide.
• Where it's playing, or Not on any screen yet.
• The menu its prices are linked to.
• History: a version is kept each time a change is kept or published. Press Restore to go back to one.
• Its last download. If the menu has changed since, it says Out of date; press Export Again for a new file.

And what to do with it: Duplicate, Make Another Size, move it to a folder, or Move to Trash.

A design in Trash is deleted for good 30 days after it was moved there. Until then, open it from Trash and press Take Out of Trash. A design that's on a screen can't go to Trash: take it off its screens first.

Download a design

Download in the editor saves a Picture (PNG), a smaller Picture (JPG), a PDF to print, or a Video with motion for an animated design, for printing, social media or anywhere else.

Your brand kit

The Brand Kit is one kit for your whole business: every location, screen and design uses it, and AI follows it. Templates use it first.

• Business: your name, a tagline, and your website (shown on flyers and posts).
• Logos: up to three versions, On dark, On light and Icon only, as PNG, JPEG or WebP. Logo on every slide sets where your logo sits on each slide.
• Colors: each has a role: Main color, Accent, Dark background, Light background and words, and Extra. Pixigns points out pairs that are hard to read on a TV, such as prices in your accent color on your main color. Turn on Prices always in the accent color to make prices stand out.
• Fonts: one each for Headings, Accents and Body text.
• Words and rules: your tone of voice, words AI shouldn't use, and what photos made with AI should look like.

Let AI start it for you: Suggest from My Website reads your logo, colors and fonts from your website, and suggesting colors from your logo works once you've added one. You check everything before it's saved.

Save, then apply

Changes show in the page's previews straight away, and Pixigns counts them, like You changed 1 field. Previews show it; designs don't change until you apply it. Press Save Brand Kit to keep them, or Discard.

Saving changes nothing on your screens. Designs change only when someone applies the brand to them, so nothing moves by surprise. Apply it to a design from the Brand Kit, and the change can be undone in the editor.

Your own fonts

Choose Upload a font… to use your own font, as a .woff2, .woff, .ttf or .otf file. It's checked, then stored on each screen with the designs that use it. A brand kit can have up to 10 uploaded fonts.

A font's licence must allow putting it on screens. If it doesn't, Pixigns refuses it: This font's licence doesn't allow putting it on screens. Use another font, or ask its maker for one that allows embedding.

On a phone

On a phone, the editor opens as Quick Edit: change the words, a menu's prices and what's sold out, take a photo or make one with AI, then press Publish to Screens. Do the rest of your designing on a computer or tablet. See On your phone.