NYC sightings: screens so high the installer probably got altitude sickness

August 7, 2009 by Dave Haynes

I was in New York all day Thursday, down near Wall Street, working with a client. Here’s a nice example of how NOT to do a screen in a public walkway. This is a 40-ish inch display mounted what looks to be about 14 feet above the finished floor of the walkway leading ion and out of the World Financial Center complex near Ground Zero.

A truly nice job on the custom mounts and there is nothing wrong with the fit and finish. But it is 14 FEET UP!!! Look at all the people not looking at the screen, and how many would ever look up. It is challenging enough getting people to look at a screen mounted at 7.5 feet off the floor, but double that??? Yes, they don’t seem so high at a distance, but the screens are too small to offer up messages from any real distance. 

Complete waste of time, money and opportunity.

On a better note, here’s the central area in the new JetBlue terminal at JFK. The big screen to the right is a JC Decaux ad panel, which I assume was two sided, but I didn’t check. The halo effect in the centre is all LCD screens with the content moving across them. Nicely done as an ambient, design effect.  

Pix from my new phone, which is not a Blackberry and actually, unlike the RIMs, takes decent photos. After three years I can actually start posting shots of stuff I see that actually look worthwhile!

A unique story: My flight into JFK was 28 minutes early and the flight back left on time. Miracles happen.