An indoor LED display from Messagemaker provides an elegant decorative solution for a corporate business space
LED QED
Signs come in all shapes and sizes and sign-makers have had to adapt as much as anyone over recent years. LED digital screens themselves have mat-ured into an important tranche of the sign trade, with a raft of products offering differing quality, capabilities and profit opportunities. Nobody wants to lose business to a technology that they cannot deal with, but fortunately for sign-makers, there are companies out there who can help you deliver,
while allowing you to keep your customers.
One company that offers this help is Spectra Displays, which has been designing and manufacturing elec-tronic signage for 24 years and has experience in all sectors.
“In addition to our standard electronic signs, Spectra also makes hybrid displays that are becoming increasingly popular with corporate and small clients alike,” says Rachel Leavsley, marketing manager for Spectra Displays.
Things that were not practical five years ago are more practical now because the quality is better and the price is down”
She adds: “Commonly located at the entrance to a factory or other premises, they can be updated to show dynamic information—either by using a large electronic display, or electronic fields within a larger system that can be designed to reinforce the corporate brand identity. The electronic displays can be easily updated with figures or messages as required. This provides a longer lasting solution for the end user as they can update the displays as necessary, rather than having to purchase new signage as things change.”
Spectra has noticed that over the past few years, the amount of custom displays they are designing and building for traditional sign-makers is increasing.
Leavsley continues: “Our experience and professional know-how comes into its own when working with traditional sign-makers, meaning that they don’t have to turn business away where dynamic fields are required.
Spectra Displays product featuring a magnetic message strip along the bottom - a client requested this in order that their message can be changed as and when required without altering the focal point of the numeric field
“We can work with sign-makers on any scale of project, be that a simple one-off project through to larger ongoing contracts. We pride ourselves on taking a proactive approach to working with our clients and offer guidance on using the sign as required. They aren’t abandoned once the solution is in place and we are happy to talk to the end user of the displays if required, to work through any teething problems—99 percent of the time a single phone call or e-mail is all it takes. Our products are suitable for a range of environments—including indoor or outdoor locations, manufacturing, construction sites to name but a few.”
Spectra’s displays are supplied with simple PC software and they can tailor this to meet operating requirements. This means software is no longer a black art.
“In our experience, everyone has different requirements for their custom signs—perhaps in terms of the number of fields of electronic displays, the size of them, the environment in which they are to be used. We work with sign-makers to provide the right solution rather than pushing a one size fits all product. That said, sometimes the end user needs something simple and has no specific requirements; in that situation we do have a range of suit-able, simple solutions,” she concludes.
We work with
sign-makers to provide the right solution rather than pushing a one
size fits all product”
An example of a Spectra customer is Meggitt Control Systems in Coventry, where efficiency is taken very seriously. To reinforce this message, and demonstrate their commitment to a positive health and safety culture, the company decided to place a dynamic lost time accident display outside their main reception, which showed the number of days since their last lost time accident and also their record number of days.
Spectra Displays worked to finalise a design for the display that was in keeping with the corporate branding, before production commenced at its UK manufacturing base. In addition to the display itself, Spectra also supplied tailored laptop software that allows, not only the date of the last accident to be entered, but also allows the LED brightness and colour to be changed accordingly.
This is a very good example of what many would term a ‘luxury’ rather than a ‘necessity’ commission, and high-lights that sales of LED digital signage are their for the taking if you can educate your customers about their ease-of-use, capabilities, and impact on efficiency.
A high-end campaign for luxury brand Lancome flickers into digital life via a 360° Messagemaker Imposa Lite unit—proving the perception of the technology with sign-buyers
The right specs
Another key player in the LED digital signage market is Messagemaker, a company with over 20 years of exp-erience in developing, manufacturing, installing and supporting digital LED displays.
“As LED specialists, we work with customers to meet all sizes of project requirements, from simple text displays to complex, bespoke display solutions. We believe that specification is key to making sure end users get the best possible solutions at the best value for money and this translates to a better deal for sign-makers,” says managing director, Harry Filer.
In our experience, everyone has different requirements for their custom signs”
Filer believes that full colour LED screens are becoming increasingly popular, as costs have plummeted in the past few years combined with an ongoing evolution in their quality, but warns this has its own problems: “With such a wide range available, how does an innocent buyer sort the wheat from the chaff?”
Filer highlights that prices for similar specifications of screens can vary by as much as a factor of three, and so the company has complied a detailed guide for customers to highlight the key factors that buyers and specifiers should be aware of when comparing similar specification displays.
The major reason for the cost variance is LED specification. LED’s are the largest cost in any LED display. and with each square metre of 10mm pixel display using 30,000 LED chips, small differences in LED prices equal big differences in display price.
“For a display from us, screen cost can vary by a factor of 2.5 solely on a change of LED brand, with all other components and specifications rem-aining exactly the same. Beware manufacturers offering low cost LED’s but claiming performance is ‘almost the same’ as a top brand like Nichia,” adds Filer.
In this fast moving market there is a league table of quality and price for full colour display LEDs, as Filer explains: “Most manufacturers quote an LED life of 100,000 hours (11.4 years), which sounds fantastic and drives end users to thinking that they can buy the lowest cost and the LEDs must be the same quality. Sadly this is simply not the case.
Messagemaker’s Imposa Lite unit leaps into life on the front of a JD Sports store as the company attempts to attract users to come into the store
“LED life is the biggest disin-genuous statistic quoted with LED displays. It’s true that if you look at LED makers test sheets they will all typically quote a 100,000 hour life at 25 degree temperature. What this means is that on average the LED will have faded to half its original brightness if driven at stated power for that time. But in practice, no LED in a real world application runs at that temperature. Most of the energy the display uses goes to heat. So the chip temperature when running in a real world environment is usually much higher. This dramatically affects life. Early white LED’s had a real world life of just months because of this issue.”
He continues: “Crucially, lower cost LEDs are affected by this factor much more than top brand products. So while laboratory life may be the same, real world life is dramatically different. In some cases top brand screen makers are commendably honest and will quote a shorter overall screen life which reflects real world usage. It is our job at Messagemaker to help customers tell what’s a good quality display from the bids laid out on their desk.
“We encourage customers to also look for advanced features like white balance correction, colour temperature correction, individual pixel adjustment, self diagnostics, and automatic fault reporting. A good indicator of general quality is to ask the standard LED brand specified. A maker using a top brand like Nichia as standard is probably making a good display in other areas too.”
The full colour display of this unit, while lower resolution than an LCD alternative, is longer lasting and durable outdoors
According to Filer, a high quality display will look almost the same as a low quality display very early in its life. It’s in three to six months time that you’ll see and know the difference, as he points out: “The market is like
a tide going out and covering rocks. The tide is price and the rocks are the applications. Things that were not practical five years ago are more practical now because the quality is better and the price is down.”
This last point is perhaps the most important one to take on board when thinking about diversifying into LED digital signage and making it a bigger part of your products and services portfolio. Whereas it would have been impossible for many smaller sign-makers to make a business out of such systems even two years ago, the shifts in time and tide seem to have made it a very valuable avenue to consider.
