For the start of this series, click here.
CBS Cube
CBS Outdoor sponsored and designed the CBS Cube, which incorporates a vinyl print and an HD LED videoscreen outdoor display. The structure’s 45-ft.-square perimeter hugs both sides of the E-Walk building corner, on the northwest corner of 42nd St. and Eight Ave. Eight, smaller, flexible-face, perimeter sign panels line each side of the sign face; at the center sits the LED screen.
Wayne Bifulco, director of CBS Outdoor’s NYC projects, said, “The sign currently sits exactly where the old Target Lava lamp [see ST, February 2002, page 74] was installed. In its new advertising configuration, the CBS Cube comprises a 45 x 45-ft. grid of structural tubes that hangs off the building facade, which is subdivided into smaller, 13-ft.-square, backlit sign cabinets that were inserted within the steel grid.”
Eighteen, high-output, fluorescent lamps backlight each sign-cabinet interior. Across the perimeter of each cabinet, a series of programmable Opto Technology (Wheeling, IL) LED lighting fixtures provides performance lighting Spectrum Signs (Farmingdale, NY) fabricated the display, and North Shore Neon (Deer Park, NY) installed it.
Jodi Senese, CBS Outdoor’s marketing director, said, “The opportunities this advertising location presents are both its location and its short-term availability, which can be obtained only as a full sign face in as little as one-month advertising increments. The beauty of the CBS Cube is, despite its structural complexity, it gives a great appearance of visual simplicity, which is critical for successful advertising and ease of viewing to passersby.”
Senese said the company receives two types of creative from the host client: printed flexible-face material for the perimeter sign cabinets and video content for the center LED screen.
New Year’s Eve: The Fall of the Ball
For the last 100 New Year’s Eves, people have gathered to watch NYC’s time-honored tradition of lowering the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball on December 31 at 11:59 p.m. That ritual has become a significant, international-community event that’s seen, onsite, by at least a half million people and, via television worldwide, by at least one billion viewers.
During its moments of fame, the 6-ft.-diameter ball descends 77 ft. (23 meters) to the bottom of its pole. In collaboration, many surrounding, LED signs temporarily display clocks that also count down to midnight.
The ball-drop ritual began with the British Royal Navy, which installed the first “time-ball” atop England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at 1 p.m. every afternoon, which allowed the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers.
In Times Square, the ball celebrated its centennial with a sixth-generation ball, an improvement from the original 1907 wooden sphere lowered to mark the end of the year.
Conclusion
Times Square’s latest signage is as much a landscape for clever, conventional signage, with a twist (a ribbon or a cube) as it is a runway for one-of-a-kind spectaculars. As ST’s Senior Technology Editor Darek Johnson said, “Times Square is the Louvre Museum to the sign industry. It’s where all the great sign art is.”