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Customizing Signature Appearance

Apr 5, 2026 · 473 views

The visible signature box is what your recipients actually see — OneSigner lets you control every element of it, per profile.

Text Elements

  • Signer name: show the certificate holder's name with a configurable label (e.g. "Signed by:").
  • Email / Organisation: optional lines pulled from the certificate or set explicitly.
  • Date/time: signing timestamp with a custom format such as yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm.
  • Reason: e.g. "Approved", "Sealed by One Sign Pte. Ltd."
  • Location: e.g. "Singapore".

Reason and location are embedded in the cryptographic signature dictionary as well, so they appear in Adobe Acrobat's signature panel — not just in the visual stamp.

Graphics

  • Show graphics: add an image — a scanned handwritten signature, company chop, or logo.
  • Layout modes:
    • Left — image on the left, text on the right (classic look)
    • Top / Bottom — image above or below the text
    • Background — image behind the text (watermark style)
    • Overlay — image drawn over the text
  • Text area percent: how much of the box the text occupies vs. the image (default 55%).

Text Formatting

  • Font size: set a fixed size, or 0 to auto-fit the text to the box.
  • Vertical alignment: top, center, or bottom.

Appearance in the Web Portal

When signing interactively in the browser (Sign myself or an eSign request), the signer can draw, type (in a script font), or upload a signature image, and choose ink colour. Two rendering styles are available:

  • Image only — just the signature image inside the box (default, cleanest look).
  • Composed — image plus "Signed by" name and date lines.

Preview Before Production

Use Test Sign in the SigningEngine tab (or the Sign Files tab preview) to render your appearance on a real sample PDF. Iterate until the box size, layout and font look right — then enable the profile.

Good Practice

  • Keep the box proportional to its content: 180×70 pt suits a name + date; add height if you enable more lines.
  • A transparent-background PNG of a handwritten signature over the printed name line looks the most natural.
  • Remember: the legal weight comes from the cryptographic signature, not the picture. Even an invisible signature is fully valid — the appearance is for humans.