I recently made a visit to Exeter to check out digital signage around the city centre. I wanted to explore if marketing communications were delivered more in portrait or landscape formats, and I wanted to understand the reasons for this. Although we do see some of our education customers utilising portrait screens and content, the majority install landscape.
Space Requirements
Thinking about this while on the train to Exeter, space requirements came to mind. Available space will always determine screen size and ratio. In the world outside of schools historically billboards on a large scale are and were landscape. This certainly would seem to be true when I think back to my days driving into Birmingham on the A38. Space was not at a premium so I remember huge digital boards advertising to the thousands of drivers on a daily basis.
Compared to schools, practicality of size is more important in areas such as a high street. When you think about the dimensions of a bus stop, portrait screens are perfect for the ends. They have more vertical surface available to them, whereas the longer landscape space available is more often than not used for printed bus time tables.
And that wider surface is often fitted with clear glass so shops in the same vicinity can easily be viewed from within the bus stop. So from a simple space perspective portrait screens fit nicely into narrow spaces where landscape ones wouldn’t.
Eye line
Then I started to think about my eye line when walking down the high street. Ideally you don’t want your viewer having to excessively look up when consuming content, especially when walking past digital signage at pace.
In areas such as the train station or hospital this isn’t such an issue when there is time to stop, look up and view the content. Or even in a doctor’s surgery, where content can be viewed while sitting waiting patiently for an appointment.
In the high street the eye line of a viewer is at a vertical walking height so it makes sense for digital billboards to be portrait to maximise consumer consumption. And again space will play into this. Landscape screens at the viewer height would take up so much more space when built into a wide kiosk housing.
Mobile Phones
I’m of a generation that didn’t grow up with mobile phones. I remember them first being released when I was around seventeen. Before this my world was used to widescreen televisions and more four-by-three type square desktop and laptop screens.
Now, however, a key driver for portrait screens could be based on how we now consume much of our daily digital media through mobile phones and small portrait screens. Because of this, it is therefore physically and psychologically easier to transpose content from digital and social media to a portrait screen.
Think of high street fashion brands and advertising clothing via models. A portrait screen will provide far more impact from a model’s perspective than a landscape where the canvas area to work with is reduced.
What did I learn
In the world outside of schools, digital signage is very much defined by the space available for screen location, as well as maximising content consumption from a viewers eyeline perspective. It also makes sense to easily replicate content in a format we are all used to, which is portrait, thus mirroring our mobile phones.
In the school environment, I’m not sure the same level of thinking goes into screen location and maximising content consumption by a viewers’ eye line? From my various visits to our TrilbyTV using schools, screens are often located in high footfall areas but usually above doors or in corridors where there is available space. They are not necessarily installed at a viewer’s eye line.
Although, on a recent visit to Bryanston School, they had installed a portrait screen as part of a lunch hall refresh. The screen is cleverly moulded into the design of the wall. They had also purchased mobile poster signage displays that can easily be transported to any location within the school. These were portrait sized for ease of transporting and consideration of space.
Luckily for schools, portrait or landscape isn’t a hardware choice when it comes to purchasing. It’s simply a change in the screen settings and a different wall bracket choice. So portrait or landscape is available whatever your requirements.
If you’d like to find out more about digital signage made for education, why not book a free demo with us. You can even try out TrilbyTV by signing up for a 30-day free trial to see how it works for your school or trust.