As you know, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is the leader in design software for the sign industry. We continue to improve our products on a regular basis to help production-oriented professionals to create amazing billboards, car wrap and signs. With the upcoming 3rd Update to CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X7 for example, to be released later this year, we will introduce a completely re-designed knife tool that will provide those with a Premium Membership or Subscription to reach new levels of creativity and productivity (this will be a standard feature in X8 for everyone else).

One area of the "sign" industry that we've kept a close eye on over recent years is the word of digital signs - yes these big TVs that are popping up everywhere with menus, special offers, latest weather and twitter feeds. While existing solutions exist for large companies to deploy these throughout their franchises or in big malls, the existing products primarily focus on complex networks of TV screens with advanced scheduling. This is all great, but certainly not easy for a small business to install in their store / office / restaurant. From our experience working closely with Small Businesses for their visual communication needs, we know that: 

• you don't have time and would rather focus on your business
• if you do something, you want to make sure it looks great - it's your business
• you want to keep your costs under control
• you would love the flexibility of always up-to-date screens with the latest offers and promotions, but not the cost associated with current solutions in the market

For these reasons and many more, we've decided to take a different approach to getting your message on a TV screen, and are excited to introduce Corel Digital Signage today.

Working closely with our partner SmarterSign who brings a wealth of experience in this area, Corel Digital Signage is a unique solution for small businesses who want to make and impact with their visual communication. Our design philosophy has been a three-step approach, removing all the complexity and getting you going in a matter of minutes. 

1. Create: You can choose from hundreds of high-quality templates to get going very quickly. You can create anything from menus, special offers (happy hours anyone), local information such as local weather in a matter of minutes. 
2. Edit: Through an interact user interface, you can very quickly and easily drag & drop things around, add your own graphics, text & videos, and use an extensive set of widgets that provide local weather, twitter updates and much more. 
3. Publish: Once you're happy with the results, you press a button to get the digital sign live. Simply connect a Windows 7/8 computer to an HD TV (we do recommend you go with screens designed for digital signage, but any HD TV will work just fine), install the little piece of software and you're good to go!

Corel Digital Signage is a web service, which means that you can get the latest offers update on your screens in a matter of seconds from wherever you (have you ever worked from home over the week-end?), and this from any MacOS or Windows computer with a web browser. The player software will then automatically get the latest sign displayed on your screen. We've also made sure that if your Internet connection isn't available, your digital sign continues to work just fine (everything is cached locally).

Corel Digital Signage will initially be available in English for North America at the low price of US$ 29.95 per month, plus we have a free 15-days trial period (it should work fine from other regions though). Find out more details and try it out today at www.coreldraw.com/digitalsignage.