Levelling light
The client was concerned about screen visibility in the well-lit atrium, so O’Brien’s team also brought light testing equipment to the site, then replicated the same levels back at Gridcast’s facility.
“At this size of display, you really have to consider pixel pitch based on where people see it from,” says O’Brien. “Holt Renfrew wanted a big, powerful effect. Going with LEDs accomplished that. And then we pumped up the brightness just to be safe.”
Attracting attention
Shortly after the video walls debuted, Holt Renfrew commissioned Montreal-based Moment Factory—renowned around the world for large-scale multimedia projections—to create special content for the Christmas shopping season.
“It’s important to always be fresh,” says O’Brien. “We encourage our clients not to stick with a mould. When you have a huge display, especially, you have a responsibility to do something awesome with it!”
Further, the renovated store is intended to serve as a prototype for new and redesigned Holt Renfrew locations to come.
In the meantime, the video walls were nominated and named among the finalists for the 2014 Digital Signage Expo (DSE) Apex Awards, which honour innovation in digital signage project deployments. As announced on February 12 at the annual DSE in Las Vegas, Nev., Gridcast won a silver award in the retail category.
The project also won a 2014 Association for Retail Environments (ARE) Design Award in the in-store communications category. It was presented on March 18 during Global Shop, a retail design and shopper marketing trade show, also in Las Vegas.
With files from Gridcast Media and NanoLumens. For more information, visit www.gridcast.ca and www.nanolumens.com.
