Blessed Are The (Roland) Cheesemakers
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
The presentation on Thursday at #2014SignExpo entitled ‘Demystifying Digital Signage For Sign Makers’ from Roland DGA Corp. President, Rick Scrimger (11:00 in the Dynamic Digital Park) should be an absolute hoot when they (Roland) are NOT embarrassed to show this (and I make no apologies for using this word) CRAP at the event…
Let’s take shall we, a pack of playing cards as our design metaphor … then forget totally that playing cards are like, PORTRAIT and then throw a digital display into the sign in landscape across, what would otherwise have been a nice static sign.
The ‘sign’ itself is nice, ‘Put another Ace in your hand’ a good call to action to advertise the new Roland DisplayStudio digital sign system (note to the ISA, not even Roland are using your ridiculous Dynamic Digital Signage moniker) BUT whoever figured out why a TV screen should be thrown across the middle of it should be fired instantly.
Then let’s take a look at the digital content on display – the designer has forgotten that the ‘pack of playing cards’ is the background to the design … there’s even an instance of the digital display going dark – where it looks like the screen is off .. so bottom line even their transitions are awful.
At worst this was designed by two different people, at best .. no wait there isn’t a best. This is probably one of the worst screen displays we have ever seen.
April 24th, 2014 at 16:31 @730
Dare I say it – for once, Adrian, we agree!
April 28th, 2014 at 14:45 @656
Never count Roland and Rick Scrimger out of the game.
When David Williamson and I did the first presentation at the Sign Expo in 2001 on Digital Signage, Roland DGA Bob Curtis was in the audience. Roland was not the first company to introduce digital tools to traditional craft sign makers (Gerber Scientific was), but Roland was the firm that took digital tooling for sign-making to the next level.
If history is any guide, Roland will do the same here. Their customer base is with the sign shops. They know the needs of the mom-and-pop sign shops, and if anybody or any firm can help take the mom-and-pop into the digital signage market successfull, it will be Roland and Rick Scrimger.