Move Beyond Message Boards

Dynamic digital signage and media features are now incorporated seamlessly in the design of floors, walls, architectural features, and the exteriors of stores and retail spaces. These technologies are turning shopping into a total immersive experience.

Just look at the flagship Gucci store in Milan. Gucci’s designers have utilized life-size interactive images to shape this elegant retail experience. Here, the LCD video wall displays, incorporated into the columns of the store’s interior create a striking and powerful daytime and nighttime stage to entice shoppers.

Reinforce the architectural features and promote your brand to deliver a sophisticated visual ambience where customers can actually interact with the merchandise in a variety of ways, from selecting garments to exploring them in three-dimensions by moving their head from side to side.

These technologies and creative approaches – including high resolution displays, video walls, unique aspect ratio towers of video, and gesture-based interactivity – are not limited to retail, but can cross applications of digital signage to airports, corporate lobbies, museums and other public venues.

You will find parallels of these new trends in the new Bradley International Terminal at LAX and in the interactive display in the lobby of the international architecture firm, Gensler, in Los Angeles, as examples.

While the Gucci flagship store is on a busy street in Milan, Canadian department store Holt Renfrew remodeled their existing storefront within an existing mall. Designers created a living and modern architectural feature, so that the façade now reflects and reinforces the unique architectural styling, while the ever-changing content, and sheer size of the panels demand notice. The new installation calls attention to the store’s mall entrance.

Six 29-by-4-ft. digital panels display the latest fashion trends and catch the eye of shoppers and passers-by. Bringing to mind strong architectural columns, the simple, direct panels provide a platform to display dynamic digital content. This content can be the same on all panels or be displayed separately and simultaneously. Featuring more than 1.5 million LED packages, this is one of the largest indoor LED display implementations within Canadian retail.   

Similarly to the displays at Milan’s Gucci store, where life-sized interactive images which shape the retail experience, these planes of images create a striking and powerful daytime and nighttime stage to entice shoppers.

Leslie Gallery-Dilworth, FAIA, former ceo of SEGD (Society for Environmental Graphic Design) will be presenting a full day Pre-Show Master Class entitled, “Dynamic Digital Environments,” on Tuesday, 2/11 at Digital Signage Expo 2014 at the Sands Expo & Convention Center in Las Vegas. DSE runs Wednesday-Thursday February 12-13. For more information about DSE or to register for this or any other educational seminar or workshop and learn about digital signage go to www.dse2014.com