This fifth edition of the popular sign design series includes the winners of recent Signs of the Times contests: electric and commercial signs for retail shops, restaurants and bars, residential ...
The ABC Times Square icon is reborn.
As a media façade, the ABC Times Square Studios’ LED display is a sight to behold. Nine, curvilinear, horizontal, LED video ribbons undulate around the facade’s front. Home to ABC’s Good Morning America, the building presents what seems to be a gigantic TV screen that displays network news and upcoming program and entertainment previews. Actually, the display, the only LED sign in the world that’s integrally involved with a major-TV-network program, is trailblazing the future of media-façade-based “performance signage.”
Easily seen throughout Times Square, the display broke ground as a media façade, a term that describes an LED video display that completely covers a building’s front cladding. Media facades now proliferate on Times Square to capitalize on the area’s advertising clout.
A precursor to media facades
Originally created in 1999 by its corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., the ABC Times Square Studios’ LED spectacular is one of the area’s oldest such displays. Having beamed more than 70,000 hours of news and entertainment for eight years, the screen has recently been updated by D3 (Rancho Cordova, CA), a full-service LED video-display firm that designs and fabricates high-definiLED video displays.
D3 LED screens also appeared recently in several other Times Square sites, such as a display replacement for the Armed Forces Recruiting station, the exterior displays on M&Ms® Retail World (see ST, October 2007, page 90) and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium (see ST, August 2007, page 90).
Initially built by Multimedia LED (Rancho Cordova, CA), the integrated LED display was divided into nine, separate, horizontal, LED ribbons, each approximately 133 ft. long, that extended lengthwise across the building. The first seven, full-color ribbons boasted a 50mm pixel pitch and formed a video-ribbon screen across the front of the building.
To enhance the display’s visual appeal, a SONY JumboTron LED videoscreen was embedded within the bigger Multimedia LED screen. Below that, the text-feature band briefly summarized the story behind the video image. The lowest ribbon broadcast sports news, and the one above that broadcast news headlines.
To facilitate the ribbon’s unique shape, NYC-based Landmark Signs built a curved, steel, interlocking frame that connected it to the building façade. Landmark built it in New Jersey, disassembled it and re-assembled it in Times Square.
