Giant, Animated LED Foil Letter Tops Deutsche Telekom HQ

February 15, 2021 by Dave Haynes

I caught up recently with Florian Kall of the German start-up LightNTec, which uniquely does LED displays that use super-thin foil as its substrate or surface.

The product is not really intended as competition to mainstream information displays, as it is an interesting way to approach experiential environments and ambient, motion lighting. Because it is foil, it is very light and can be floated over a room. It’s also cuttable, and not just in a very specific way.

I was interested in how the tech can also be used outdoors as a new kind of sign material, with the base foil background in a brand’s color, but active, so the colors and visuals can change.

Deutsche Telekom recently put a giant five meter letter T on the roof of its head office in Bonn, Germany, with the letter picking up the company’s highly recognized magenta color. So it looks like a big magenta T, but it has some 11,000 LED light emitters and can switch from that solid color to animations in different colors. The content syncs with the little squares that are part of the company’s T logo.

“By means of ledTec.flex we are able to equip every form and size with a luminous intensity of 5,000 lumens,” explains Kall, one of the company’s managing directors.

The concept was developed by the agency MetaDesign.