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LCD Screen Advertising

Updated on October 10, 2007

Slides are due by 5 PM on Thursdays for the upcoming week (slides run Monday to Monday)!

Groups and departments may design and submit PowerPoint presentations, which will be compiled on a weekly basis. Slides will be viewable on new large screen TVs in the Blue Room (Faunce House), Friedman Study Center Cafe, and Sharpe Refectory. In addition, the slides are available as channel 1 on IPTV with an audio feed from Brown Student Radio (IPTV delivers cable to student rooms via their computers).

How often your presentation will show depends on the number of submissions for that week; however, we will work to limit the slides each week to ensure that all presentations will be viewable at least once every 20-30 minutes with priority given first to one-time events and, within one-time events, those that are sponsored by students. Note that the University may suspend event announcements to allow the use of the channel for the live broadcast of major events and programs; we will do our best to provide notice to event advertisers of such an event.

This program was made possible through a collaboration between the Division of Campus Life and Student Services (CLSS), the Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS), Computer and Information Services (CIS), Brown Student Agencies (BSA), and the Student Activities Office (SAO). Some of the guidelines for use were developed based upon a similar service provided by the Audio-Visual Services department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Steps for Submission

STEP ONE: Design your own slides or use one of our templates (coming soon), following the Submission Guidelines below.

STEP TWO: For events, submit your event to the University's Event Calendar. No slides promoting an event will be accepted unless the event has also been posted on the calendar. This is very easy and free -- should take you no longer than a minute.

STEP THREE: All slides will run for one week starting on Monday morning (or the first business day of the week in the event Monday is a University holiday). Submit your slide show to events_promo (@brown.edu, of course) by 5 PM on the Thursday immediately before when want your slides to run. Please also send any background images as a seperate file. When submitting your slides, please let us know the date of the Monday you would like your presentation to begin to be viewable, and, if it is not a one-time event, if you would like your slides to run occasionally (no more than once a month), depending on space and availability.

Submission Guidelines

Length of Presentation

  • All slides will be set to appear for 7 seconds.
  • Individual events or programs should submit no more than 3 slides.
  • Groups advertising a series of events or services are permitted one introductory slide, one slide per event or service, and one concluding slide. Please consult with us in advance if you expect to submit more than 12 slides.
  • Slides advertising a specific event, program, or deadline, can run for no more than 2 weeks. Recurring events or services (such as library hours or information about dining services), at your request, can be run 3 times a semester; however, we will run it more often as space allows.

Design Guidelines

  • KEEP IN MIND: People will only view slides for brief period of time while glancing at it or turning on their cable. They probably won't stop and pull up a chair in order to enjoy your presentation. Most will only see a few slides.
  • Please submit your file in the .ppt format (not .pptx or any other format)!
  • PLEASE SPELL CHECK AND ENSURE YOUR INFORMATION IS ACCURATE!
  • No audio will be accepted. The public screens will be silent, and Brown Student Radio will be the default audio background for IPTV.
  • No video, animation, or slide transitions.
  • MARGINS: Please leave a half inch margin on all four sides of each slide. Any less will result in content being cut off the screens.
  • Three to six lines of text per screen. More than that amount of text is hard to read, and people lose interest. Remember, as media goes, think of this display as more of a billboard than a computer.
  • High contrast between the background and any text or images is critical for ease of viewing, particularly for those who low vision; however, please also avoid extremely bright or neon colors. Please avoid designs with the following combinations of colors in direct contact with one another (such as text and background) to accommodate those with red-green colorblindness: (1) red and black and (2) green and black. As well, if you use red and green on the same slide, be sure they are distinctly different shades (e.g. dark red and light green).
  • Do not use all caps, except for an occasional word or two. A lot of text in all caps is very difficult to read quickly.
  • Use large fonts. In fact, use larger fonts than you think you will need. We believe 24 point is small. We recommend A MINIMUM of 32.
  • Please remember to also send any background images as a seperate file.

Content Guidelines

There are many opportunities and venues for advertising events on campus. This service is sponsored by the Division of Campus Life and Student Services and is administered by the Student Activities Office. As such, guidelines for this venue reflect the sponsorship and therefore include venue specific regulations, in addition to those articulated in campus Postering and Publicity Regulations. These guidelines also take into consideration the fact that this service is broadcast directly into students' rooms via the IPTV campus cable service.

All slides are reviewed by the Student Activities Office. If any slides may be in violation of these content guidelines, the SAO may also consult the Student Activities Advisory Board for their input. When designing your slides, please keep in mind that those which may violate these guidelines may require additional time for review; we recommend you plan on, at minimum, an additional week of review.

  • All submissions must adhere to Postering and Publicity Regulations.
  • Do not use material for which you do not have copyright permission.
  • Graphic or sexually-explicit material is prohibited, including nudity and/or portrayal of sexual situations.
  • No events open to those under 21 where alcohol will be served. Please keep in mind that due to the location of the screens and IPTV, the majority of the audience will be undergraduates.
  • Profane or derogatory language is prohibited, including replacing all or some of the letters of the intended text with symbols (such as #&!).
  • The purpose of this service is to advertise important information, services, events, activities, and deadlines for the Brown community and students in particular.  The slides may be used to invite the community to seminars or discussions on controversial or political topics but cannot be used as a means of directly delivering such content.