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sign of the times [cool signs]

tom — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:57:12 +0000

It seems all is not down and out in the world of information signage. Some new, well new to me, signs at Chipotle, AMC Theaters and Tokyo DisneySea recently caught my attention.

Chipotle Mexican Grill: New Menu Displays

Chipotle recently refreshed their menu displays with new very simple and very easy to read boards.
In addition to being easy to read, I felt like the type looked familiar. So I tried to use the iPhone application version of WhatTheFont [itunes link] but didn’t have much luck. What to do? I may or may not have emailed Chipotle asking what typefaces are being used on the new, borderline magical, signs!

A friendly Chipotle representative responded:

We use a few different Interstate fonts: Interstate Light & Bold and Interstate Light Condensed and Regular Condensed. We also use Gotham Bold on the Food With Integrity Board Headline.

Thanks to the good folks at Chipotle for entertaining my quandary. If you haven’t had a chance to check out their Food With Integrity program, do it now!

AMC Theaters: New LG Information Displays

This is the first display like this that I have seen out in the wild. It isn’t a normal wide screen monitor size, in fact, it seems to be specifically designed for information signage purposes. Here is the LG page for the new displays. I’ll give them a pass for the visible logo because of the improved functionality of this display. It’s the perfect size for placement right over a doorway or vertically on a wall next to a door. AMC needs a little help improving the graphics, but this is a drastic improvement over the old LED matrix signs.

Tokyo DisneySea Raging Spirits Safety Signage

At Tokyo DisneySea, the attraction Raging Spirits features a 360 degree loop. I’m going to guess that for some reason people just couldn’t grasp that concept [perhaps because you can't see the loop from the exterior of the attraction] so this sign is featured prominently. It’s great because it effectively communicates the message, without pulling the guests out of the theme of the Lost River Delta. A low-tech solution to a high-tech high energy ride safety concern! I hope to have a few more posts soon about some of the cool stuff at Tokyo Disneyland.

Take a look at it here:

Have you seen any other cool new signs? Let me know!

universal bingo [fun at theme parks]

tom — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:24:39 +0000

Universal Studios. I always feel like the attractions are designed with the intention of being perfect…and then it all goes to shit at the last minute. I’m not sure why so many of the attractions fail. Maybe it is the same off-the-shelf effects being used in the same way on multiple attractions, the terrible timing, the illogical stories, or the theming failures.

I’ve actually put so much thought into why many Universal attractions miss the mark and made it into a super fun Bingo Game!

So what do the squares mean you ask? Well random blog reader let me tell you. The magical series of tubes permits me to hide the explanation of each the squares, simply click to find out if we were thinking the same thing.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

It’s true Disney is guilty of many of these same things. But Universal seems to try to include it all on every attraction. Can you think of anything I missed?

3 reasons drop ceilings suck

tom — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:08:47 +0000

Last time you were in a retail store or restaurant, did you look up? Not up at the products on the shelves or digital menus but up at the ceiling. Lurking above you, in nearly every store and every office building is one of my favorite things to hate: drop ceilings.

And I’m not the only person who thinks they suck. Take a look at this post on ‘Why Architects Drink.’ The jury is out on if the two of us are crazy.

Here are just a few horrible installations that I’ve seen locally.

So why do drop ceilings suck?

individual tiles often go missing or become dislodged
dust is attracted to the tiles and is rarely cleaned off
the tiles or separating metal discolors over time

And that is just the start. We need to fight the epidemic of ugly ceilings. Especially with so many other options available, there is no excuse.

The simplest solution is to eliminate the tiles altogether. In this type of situation the ceiling is often painted black so it doesn’t attract attention. You can see this in a plethora of stores, such as Corner Bakery. [I need to find a better photo!]

Uploaded by nouveaustar on Flickr [CC Licensed]

Even something like this, which is inside a building at Chapman University, would be acceptable to me.

While there will always be situations where the evil acoustical tile grid will be required/is the most cost effective (food service), there are just too many easy ways to make a more aesthetically pleasing ceiling.

You better switch away before this happens:

Uploaded by brocha on Flickr [CC licensed]

i ‘heart’ themed exit signs

tom — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:45:50 +0000

While I was working at Walt Disney World I had a mission: take a picture of every different type of themed exit sign at EPCOT. This seemingly simple task turned into an epic struggle against the salida gods [that is exit in spanish...not the god part]. Below, you’ll see a collection of the ones I captured. I’m sure I missed a bunch, any ideas which?

One of the many reasons I love EPCOT is the little design touches that contribute to the authenticity of your experience…such as exit signs that match the theme of the space they inhabit. You see, there isn’t any reduction in the safety of the environment by theming an exit sign. It is likely 95% of the visitors don’t ever notice the signs. That is the point. If the parents of Kelsey and Hunter need to exit the building quickly, the exits are clearly marked…but when they are experencing the pavilion or attraction, the signs do not intrude or interrupt the themed experience.

When the exit signs are not themed they clash between the fantasy of the designed environment and the reality of egress safety. Designers should take note of little details like exit signs that separate a novice from a professional. In recent park enhancements there has been a switch to generic exit signs [The Land, California Adventure, etc]. Usually they are black and don’t draw too much attention to themselves, but they certantly don’t match the overall theme. Sure it is a little more expensive to paint the sign or choose a unique typeface, but the subliminal enhancement of authenticity is worth it!

Without further delay, here are some great themed exit signs at EPCOT. See if you can guess what pavilion they are from and click show below the image to find out of you are right!

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

And here are a few at other Disney parks…

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Does anyone have photos of these exit signs?

Mission Space
Test Track
Old Journey Into Imagination
Spaceship Earth

Maybe I should ask, has anyone else noticed these exit signs?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Virgin America gets a lot right

tom — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:00:04 +0000

Virgin America seems to understand why we all hate airlines and is trying to do something about it. You mean I don’t need to treated as a necessary hassle? Ugh, more paying customers! Yes, Continental I’m looking at you.

Being a new airline with new planes has it’s advantages. All VA planes are equiped with Gogo wireless Internet. Gogo is probably the most amazing discovery since roast penuts. VA’s RED entertainment system is also cool; it provides Dish Network live TV, on demand movies, music and TV, in plane chat. Oh yeah, on demand food service too.

Did I mention the LED lighting that changes color depending on the time of day? Or the Method handsoap and swanky music in the bathroom? What about the power outlets at every seat? Or the ingenuous idea of mounting AVOD hardware under the floorboards then in your foot space?

There is so much that Virgin America gets right that I wish they flew to more places so I wouldn’t have to go back to being treated as cattle.

Virgin America is great but does have some odd problems:

They don’t have a mobile site. Want to check in on your phone? Good luck with that.
When you check in for your flight the website may offer an upgrade (for an aditional cost). But just kidding!! The ‘friendly’ rep on the phone said actually NO upgrades were available. To this moment, 10 hours later, the website is still trying to sell upgrades that apparently don’t exist. How evil is that?
You might sit with Satan children and adults who don’t control them. If it wasn’t for Gogo I might have gone mad. Thanks to these folks, our flight broke the world record for number of flight attendant call button pushes in 6 hours. If you still don’t get it, this same party had a 7 year old in first class, unattended, because she ‘loves the attention.’

This is what was left over from the monster child and family. Yay children?

yogurt and digital displays that both need help [cherry on top]

tom — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:03:04 +0000

Frozen yogurt. It seems easy enough. First off, what would you think “natural frozen yogurt” means? One might say that ‘natural’ means free from artificial flavors, colors and preservatives. Well, Cherry On Top believes that natural actually means “mostly all natural ingredients.”

Every single one of their products has artificial flavor in the ingredient list. Click here to see this PDF of their nutrition facts. In July, I went to the website and submitted a comment about how calling an artificial product natural is misleading. The agent from the company apologized and told me that the Orange store was one of the first stores and that is why it still has items with their old catchphrase “Natural Frozen Yogurt.” It is now September and as you can see, the cups still say “natural.” What is worse, they have now switched the name placards in front of the machines so they do not contain the ingredient list any longer (yes, they used to list nutrition and ingredient facts on the placards). Now, if you want to know about the artificial flavor in their yogurt, you’ll have to ask for an ingredient list. Tricky.

But I degrees, the real issue is the displays they have behind the payment area. Last night I ended up going to buy some unnatural frozen yogurt to cleanse my palate of the Haven Gastropub (nice theming, meh food) and noticed that they were not working correctly.

It appears that the displays are actually running from one Windows XP computer that displays flash animation in Internet Explorer windows. Why could I tell this? Take a look:

Oops. This does explain why the animation is jerky and jagged. Annoyingly, the content of the display changes in such a way that the price per ounce of ice cream isn’t constantly displayed. It would be better for Cherry On Top to create content that is synced with all three displays, ensuring that important information (such as the price) is constantly available. Flash and Internet Explorer do not appear to be providing a seamless experience either.

As the displays are currently setup, they function only as a novelty.

Each of the three displays is an off-the-shelf Samsung LCD television. The bezel on this model is not uniformly sized and the samsung logo and model name is printed on the plastic. Cherry On Top has decided to mount the displays in a portrait format which makes the logo seem even more out of place. I feel like they might not be properly aligned but I need to take a picture with a real camera to check.

digital menus done right! [peiwei]

tom — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:57:16 +0000

Have you been to Pei Wei Asian Diner lately? You haven’t? No bueno. Why don’t you go right now? Why? Because you can check out the new digital menus and [at some locations] Coca-Cola Freestyle vending device!

First off just so you know, Pei Wei was established in 2001 and now has over 150 locations in 15 states. They serve wok-seared contemporary pan-Asian cuisine and are a “faster more casual take of our parent company, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro.”

– Thanks Pei Wei website. If you read my other post on bad displays, you know how I think that the design of a information display shouldn’t distract the users from the information. Pei Wei seems to have the same obsession I have. [yay] As you can see, the new menu displays are seamlessly integrated into the existing containers without any branding or ugly bezel.

The actual content on the displays is also well designed. It is dynamic but easy to read. You can see there is a section on each display that shows some type of video loop but the text areas are crisp.

The brightness level is more than adequate, it is perhaps even too bright in the hip perpetual darkness of Pei Wei Asian Diner. I imagine that the displays can be updated from the mothership in Arizona, ensuring that you will have the same experience at every location.

An extra bonus at the El Toro location was the Coca-Cola Freestyle ‘future-of-vending’ device. This is that Coke machine that lets you choose over 100 different beverages.

I think the Freestyle machine will be Cokes answer to the increasing dislike of HFCS laced drinks. Basically, you place your cup on the device and utilize the touch screen to choose your beverage. Inside the machine there are ultra concentrated syrup containers and a smart little man who keeps track of what drinks you choose. Oh, it has RFID too.

Here is the deal though, it takes way, way, way too long per transaction. I sat (and ignored my boyfriend) watching people use the machine. On average people took 45 to 60 seconds to choose what they wanted. It wasn’t an issue late at night but during the lunch hour…that is way too long!

I think Coca-Cola can fix the problems with Freestyle pretty easily. First, switch the display from resistive to captive touch screen. I found that I had to press on the display multiple times because it didn’t register. I know passive touch screens are cheeper but this machine could save you…pay for the captive touch to improve the functionality (that’s like the iphone).

Second, give customers a RFID tag of their own. Let users go online and choose their favorite drinks to be associated with their tag. When you go to a Freestyle enabled establishment your tag could enable the machine to to dispense your favorite drink, show all your favorites on one screen or randomly select from one of your favorites…depending what you told it to do. How cool would that be? Maybe it doesn’t even need to be RFID, it could just be facial recognition!

How could you tell this face you can’t have Coca-Cola Zero? So anyway, Pei Wei Asian Diner is a champion of good information display and home to the super cool Coca-Cola Freestyle future of vending device of the future! Go check it out!

speaking of displays

tom — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:20:59 +0000

If you are going to use displays [what you might commonly call TVs] for menus or to display other forms of dynamic information in a retail, theme park, public transportation center, theater or other publicly accessible area you need to choose the right type of display. If you don’t, it looks sloppy. Plus you’ll make me grouchy…and that’s never magical.

Here are my rules for using off the shelf displays for information signage:

1. Choose LCD, not Plasma.

This is likely the biggest mistake you can make. While it is true that plasma displays have great contrast ratios, deep blacks and provide a more ‘cinematic’ viewing experience, they are not suited to display static information. Why? The evil screen burn, which is when static or repetitive graphics literally become ‘stuck’ on the display [as seen below]. Thankfully, well manufactured LCD displays are unlikely to experience this issue. Also, LCD displays have the added benefits of using less energy and being lighter than comparable plasma models.

by Ivana Bosnic

2. Choose a display with a uniformly sized bezel. [Preferably without a large brand logo]

This is a personal pet peeve of mine, especially with displays mounted in ‘themed’ areas. Choosing a display with a bezel that is thicker on one side is distracting and detracts from the goal of making the actual device ‘invisible’ to the reader. One shouldn’t be reviewing the brand of the display but instead the content.

You can see in this example from the queue of Test Track at Epcot that the bottom portion of the bezel is thicker than the other three sides. Also, the model and brand of the display are clearly visible at both the upper left corner and bottom center of the display, these should be covered or removed. Visible logos detract from the themed space. In fact, you could buy this television at your local Best Buy and likely format the content better than has been done by these ‘professionals’. [the original source was a 4:3 image and it is incorrectly formatted for this 16:9 display as you can see the text is chopped off at the upper left]

I hate to admit it, but Universal Studios Hollywood picked great displays for the queue of The Simpsons Ride.

As you can see, both of these displays have uniformly sized bezels and minmal branding. [The second NEC display does display the model but the color is not as distracting as the Toshiba at Test Track]

Keep these guidelines in mind and you will be on your way to good show…and making me happy!