Times Square: A Compass for Sign Growth High-definition LEDs and grand-format graphics mark this year’s Times Square updates. Louis M. Brill Photo credit: Tom McCavera

NYC never sleeps, and Times Winston noted Times Square’s In this report, ST presents Square’s signs never stop changing. original neon look has all but midtown Manhattan’s latest spec- New sign projects pop up daily as disappeared. taculars, including Chevrolet leases expire and new clients move Dave Ramirez, Daktronic’s New (returning), M&M’s (new), in with billboard change-outs and York project-development execu- Budweiser (second generation), neon-to-LED replacements. Older tive, said the new Daktronics Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (new), LED displays become higher-resolu- (Brookings, SD) video signage NBC (second generation) and other tion models. completely contrasts with the old Times Square sign projects. The “Crossroads of America” is Times Square. The iconic neon beginning its second century as the signs – the former Coca-Cola, Fuji, Chevrolet outdoor advertising capital of the Cannon and Samsung signs – have One Times Square’s popular signs, world. Barry Winston of Winston disappeared. such as the steaming Nissin Cup O’ & Co. (Teaneck, NJ) has probably Winston noted, “Even the Noodles and the tilting Budweiser spearheaded project management glowing and blinking neon spectac- bottle, have given way to new, of more Times Square signs over ulars still had a ‘static presence,’ digital displays. The location, which the last several decades than most with a simple, sign branding. Now, hosted the first electric zipper in of his predecessors. In 2007, he we’re in the digital age, with LED 1928 and has continued the New was involved with Budweiser, video signage, where sign messages Year’s Eve Time Ball ritual ongoing Chevrolet, M&M’s® and Empire are closer in look and feel to televi- for 75 years, has been one of NYC’s News sign projects, to name a few. sion commercials.” most photographed buildings.

90 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / AUGUST 2007 Chevrolet’s Multimedia LED eVidia display has four different clock faces. Each face changes every 15 minutes.

Landmark Signs installed the Chevrolet sign and cabinets, using the building davits, before they bolted/welded them in place. Chevrolet’s Phase I finished in time for the 2006 New Year’s Eve celebration, when it began a count- down to midnight as a snow globe. Photo credit: Multimedia LED At midnight, it became a clock face. Winston expects Phase II will be Cup O’ Noodles, which had hung 15-ft.-viewable diameter. ready by summer’s end. since 1996, has been replaced by The four, different clock faces, the Chevrolet spectacular. Landmark which switch out every 15 minutes, Budweiser Signs (NYC) dismantled the cup and prevent LED degradation inherent Also on One Times Square, is installing the huge, new Chevrolet if the LED sign always “locked” Anheuser-Busch installed a newer, spectacular in two phases. onto one clock face. Steve high-definition LED video spectac- The spectacular incorporates an Bumstead of Bellevue, WA-based ular. The original Daktronics LED LED display, a vinyl panel and Pixel Fire Productions, designed display (Bud 1), installed in 1996, several, Phase II surprises that can and operates the clock faces. included a large-scale, dimen- only be discussed when that section The spectacular, fabricated in sional, beer bottle that mechani- goes “live.” The new design, created Fall 2006, was installed during the cally tilted against a background of by Campbell-Ewald, mimics a giant winter holidays, when a morato- hundreds of colored-plastic, LED- Glockenspiel clock, complete with rium on cranes and street closures illuminated, equilateral triangles. A side chains (fabricated as vinyl begins roughly a week before small Panasonic LED videoscreen faces). Campbell-Ewald has been Thanksgiving, when the “official” graced the side of the sign face. Chevrolet’s advertising agency for holiday-shopping period begins. Landmark removed everything 95 years. Frank Barnes, Multimedia’s exec- to prepare for Budweiser’s new The giant Chevrolet clock is a utive sales manager, said video spectacular (Bud 2), which clever sign strategy. “Times Square Multimedia’s engineers, Matt Daktronics also manufactured. This has hundreds and hundreds of Sanders and Rick Van Rensselaer, display, which hugs One Times signs, but no large, easily viewable gibed the moratorium with manu- Square, measures 70 x 40 ft. and clock,” Winston said. facturing. “Because the Chevrolet displays a 20mm pitch, with a 1,072 The clock face, a high-resolution LED components couldn’t be x 608-pixel resolution. The vertical LED display provided by Multimedia craned into position on the front of sides are 4.5 x 70 ft. (64 x 1,072 LED (Rancho Cordova, CA), is the building, all the related LED pixels). An LED edge surrounds the designed with the eVidia display cabinet components were designed main-face perimeter on three sides format. A 2-ft. aluminum bezel hides and built to fit into the building’s (left, right and bottom) and displays the eVidia LED modules’ stepped freight elevator and then moved Budweiser branding. edges; a 12mm pitch (384 x 384 out the building windows for final Ramirez noted Bud 2 impres- pixels) encircles the clock face’s installation,” Barnes explained. sively anchors Times Square’s entire

SIGNS OF THE TIMES / AUGUST 2007 91 The 70 x 40-ft. Budweiser Daktronics Prostar LED video display now dominates the entire south side of Times Square. south side with its screen size and high-resolution image clarity. Spark Agency (St. Louis) created B 2’s sign content, and Daktronics’ Keyframe division manages it.

Minskoff Theatre on Broadway The Minskoff Theatre, at Broadway and 45th, inherited a new show for its stage and a new sign package – a marquee, a blade sign and a block-wide window sign – to dress up its lobby and street- side display. The show, Disney’s Lion King, had already been a smash at the New Amsterdam, also on Broadway. Before Lion King moved across Times Square into its new venue, the Minskoff’s existing blade/marquee paled compared to the hit show’s stature. Spectrum Signs (Farmingdale, NY), a full-service sign company, took charge of giving Lion King a new sign glow. Tom Morra, director of the company’s NYC Photo credit: Daktronics projects, described the project’s components: Square. The east-building elevation were printed on translucent, roll- • The blade sign comprises a comprises 45, 10 x 15-ft., glass- fed, flexible-face vinyl with a double-sided, flexible-face sign window bays that face Broadway. In specially adapted VUTEk printer. cabinet, with a translucent vinyl the second-floor lobby, a series of Spectrum, which usually installs signface, backlit with fluorescent double-faced, interior-lit sign cabinets its own sign packages, had sched- lighting. The sign cabinet’s custom- were placed in 18 window bays, and uled myriad other sign projects, so fabricated, anodized aluminum two other cabinets were mounted it contracted Service Sign Erectors cladding sports edged, decorative, into the window bays that face north (NYC) for assistance. crown-molding elements that and south. Each aluminum, double- Each light cabinet attached to the outline its vertical presence. faced sign cabinet has a translucent- window bay by connecting to a • The marquee, fabricated with vinyl-placement system, internally lit matching, vertical, building column anodized, dark-bronze aluminum, with 8-ft. fluorescent lamps. positioned between each window has a three-sided sign face that The light cabinet’s design bay. To reach the columns, Spectrum measures 62 x 9 ft.; the marquee allows full access from the rear workers cut into the building’s inte- side, which faces Broadway, spans (the lobby side) to service front rior aluminum cladding and exposed two-thirds (40 ft.) of the length to and rear graphics, interior lamps the vertical-column steel. Each create maximum sign exposure. and ballasts, and to clean cabinets cabinet was installed against welded Translucent vinyl, with backlit fluo- and windows. A custom retainer/ connection plates on each vertical rescent lighting, illuminates the extrusion, graphic-support system column. faces. Above the marquee, closed- aids the lightbox graphics’ inser- Such positioning required an faced, aluminum, channel letters tion and removal. elaborate, custom-designed scaf- spell out the theater’s name. The exterior Broadway sign face fold with a unique rigging system • The light-cabinet sign package, on displayed the familiar Lion King to lift each cabinet to a bay, where the building’s Broadway side, totals graphics. Inside, a beautiful, custom it was secured. After each cabinet more than 2,700 sq. ft., which makes graphic was designed by Mariuca was installed and tested, the vinyl it reportedly the largest in Times Brancoveanu. All signage graphics sign faces were installed.

92 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / AUGUST 2007 Photos: Spectrum Signs Photo credit: Spectrum Signs

(Above) Double-faced, aluminum, internally lit sign cabinets adver- tise the show with translucent-vinyl graphics from the theatre’s second-floor lobby.

(Left) The refurbished Minskoff Theatre incorporates a new blade and marquee sign package. The custom-fabricated, blade-sign cabinet features a double-sided, flexible-face, translucent vinyl face that’s backlit with fluorescent lighting. The marquee’s Broad- way-facing side measures two-thirds as long as the rest of the marquee. Atop the marquee, a closed-face, internally illuminated, aluminum channel letter bears the theatre name.

NBC from Times Square’s bowtie (where installation process mimics the NBC commissioned the Van 7th Ave. crosses over Broadway) steps described in that article.) Wagner outdoor company (head- and the 42nd St. areas. (The NBC The NBC sign package integrates quartered in NYC) for a new, sign package replaces the Jack and several, different sign formats into multi-faceted sign on the side of the Beanstalk spectacular (see ST, a singular display. A steel back- 5 Times Square (the Ernst & January 2004, page 66), and its ground structure mounted on the Young Building). Irwin Sheftel, VP of creative development, said the 38-story office tower now hosts a 42 x 75-ft. (10-story) spectacular, a fanciful flourish of stainless steel, vinyl and LEDs. Spectrum Signs assisted with the design and fabri- Photo credit: Spectrum Signs cated the sign. The elaborate display was divided into five major compo- nents: the crown, the base sign structure, the upper sign cabinet, an LED Panasonic videoscreen (with surround) and the lower sign cabinet. Shaaban Engineering provided structural analysis. Dr. Shaaban, the company’s principal, described the NBC sign project as an “atypical” structural-steel-tube truss that supports a large, 90,000-lb., radial sign with a 10-ft. overhang. Van Wagner Sign Erectors fabricated and installed all supporting struc- tural steel. Spectrum’s big challenge, said its president, Harvey Brooks, was rounding Ernst & Young’s 10-story NBC’s multi-faceted sign emerges as a corner. To do this, Spectrum spectacular steel and vinyl flourish and created a cantilevered, rounded an LED videoscreen. The spectacular comprises the corporate-ID header, curve and clamped the structural the base sign structure, the upper sign steel onto the building corner. This cabinet, an LED Panasonic videoscreen extended the NBC sign sightline to and a lower sign cabinet. increase its pedestrian visibility

SIGNS OF THE TIMES / AUGUST 2007 93 Detail of Red Kong as a take-off on King Kong’s Empire State Building’s demise. Vinyl graphics on metal sections build up the image of Kong’s climactic skyscraper moment. Neon outlines the bi-plane clutched in Kong’s hand. An HID lamp below mimics a searchlight.

building anchors the sign elements. Dave O’Connell, Spectrum’s project manager, described the sign package. At the top, LED-illumi- nated, reverse channel letters spell out NBC Universal. Directly below is a 17 x 37-ft. sign cabinet, backlit with 38, 400W, France HID fixtures. Below that, a full-color, LED Panasonic videoscreen appears as an upcoming Sharp Aquus televi- sion product. Underneath the videoscreen, another, identical sign cabinet promotes upcoming, NBC television shows.

M&M’s M&M’s, a long-established confec- tionary brand, has established a retail store at 1600 Broadway and incorporated enough iconic spec- taculars that even King Kong couldn’t miss it. The sign package includes two, large, full-color, LED videoscreens and a mechanically controlled blade sign filled with giant M&M’s, Photo credit: Chute & Gerdeman of which two M&M’s shells rotate. And finally, a giant light cabinet introduces Red Kong®. rior and exterior signage detail that introduces Red Kong, a whimsical D3 (Dynamic Digital Displays), was lavished upon this store in the takeoff on King Kong’s Empire NYC, fabricated the LED screens, October issue, but here’s a brief State Building demise. The image and Landmark Signs installed them. overview of the store’s exterior depicts a gigantic, Red M&M One, 32 x 32-ft., 12mm-pitch, LED signage. climbing up the building, clutching videoscreen sits on the corner of The Spectrum-fabricated blade a bi-plane in one hand and desper- 48th St. and Broadway, and the sign comprises five of the most ately hanging on with the other. other, 50 x 60-ft. LED cabinet was popular M&M’s colors. Two M&M’s Steve Boreman, senior designer mounted on the corner of 48th St. characters rotate within it. All poly- at Chute Gerdeman, noted, in a and 7th Ave. carbonate M&M’s shells were back wink to NYC, “We thought a As a further, M&M’s-brand painted with individual, M&M’s humorous reference to a great NYC enhancement, Chute Gerdeman colors and mounted within the myth would be a perfect acknowl- Retail (Columbus, OH) designed a blade sign. The trademark M was edgement for the store’ presence in blade sign and a vinyl-graphic sign formed from a white vinyl cutout Times Square.” cabinet. Spectrum Signs fabricated and applied to each M&M’s shell. Spectrum fabricated the sign and Service Sign Erectors installed The second spectacular, a 33-ft. cabinet as a series of modular both spectaculars. high x 15-ft.-wide sign cabinet, aluminum, sheetmetal sections that ST will cover the elaborate inte- with a printed-graphic vinyl face, outline a dimensional Empire State

94 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / AUGUST 2007 Reminiscent of an old-time circus wagon, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium’s three-sided marquee incorporates flash- ing lights, carved moldings, mechanically rotating signs, neon embellishments and D3’s (NYC) LED screens.

marquee surfaces. Embedded within each marquee panel is a D3 full-color, LED video display. The main, 120 x 400-pixel, 10mm-pitch LED screen measures 45 x 120 in. The two, 60 x 45-in., 200 x 160-pixel side screens promote the enormous collection of Ripley oddities. Having noted Times Square’s never-ending traffic, Spectrum pre- assembled most sign components at its Farmingdale, NY shop. Finished sign components were then placed on a wide-load trailer and brought Photo credit: Spectrum Signs to 42nd St., where the final sign components were fitted together Building. A printed vinyl graphic carving of Mr. Ripley and Ripley above the building’s entrance. applied to each section builds up to oddities – a two-headed calf and The marquee pulls its various Kong’s climatic skyscraper moment. “Geiger” are among them – is components into an integrated pres- Cove lighting enhances nighttime embedded within the top molding ence that acts as a carnie barker to viewing. For added drama, one light at the center of each marquee call out to pedestrians, challenging scans the scene like a searchlight to component. As a fanciful flourish, them to “believe it or not.” highlight Kong’s final adventure. 23k goldleaf covers all the fiber- glass molding, which, according to A sign compass Ripley’s Believe It or Not Spectrum’s Harvey Brooks, “lends As Times Square continues evolving, With a gilded and glittering display it a distinct, circus look.” the influence and importance of its bright enough to capture every- Extensive incandescent and evocative signage can’t be underesti- one’s attention, Ripley’s Believe It neon lighting serves as edge and mated. As Times Square, and its or Not Odditorium opened on facade lighting, Brooks said. signscape, grow in size, it becomes 42nd St. (between 7th and 8th Twinkling, 11W incandescent bulbs a compass for the rest of the sign avenues). Reminiscent of an old- (5,324) cover the marquee, front community. Ultimately, it poses a time circus wagon, the 16 x 35-ft., and each side façade. Chasing chicken-and-egg puzzle: Does new three-sided marquee houses a lights run back and forth across the business spawn more signage? Or cornucopia of sign formats, marquee edges. Ripley’s cursive does spectacular signage help busi- including flashing lights, carved logo is mounted several times nesses connect with their customers moldings, mechanically rotating along the marquee, as open-faced, and their markets to bring more signs, neon embellishments and neon-lit, channel letters. sales into their stores? It’s a little of LED screens, all melded into a A three-sided, mechanically both. Times Square’s successes are spectacular of de-lightful viewing. rotating sign component joins the an open textbook for the sign Neon outlines the exposed corner edge of each marquee side. community to learn from, and that’s edges of the marquee crown, Each sign-face side includes an always a good sign. n which is a decorative aluminum open-faced, neon-illuminated cornice. Directly below the crown, channel letter set that spells the Louis M. Brill is a journalist and the marquee perimeter and sides trademark name. The Ripley’s paint consultant for high-tech entertain- are edged by fiberglass scroll work, scheme combines bright red with a ment and media communications. created by Seal Fiberglass and brilliant gold satin finish and He can be reached at (415) 664- rendered by Minds Eye Studios. A completely covers all exposed 0694 or [email protected]

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