The Rundown
Topics: Sustainability, LED, Graphics | Published: November 2023 | 1 min read
LED video walls are bright, high quality and dynamic, and they configure in an enormous variety of ways to suit a client and a venue.
Their obvious use is stage content, where scale and fidelity mean large audiences can see clearly from anywhere in the room.
What gets overlooked is how effective the same screens are for static information - sponsor logos, event details, advertising. That content is almost always printed, and print at event scale is notoriously wasteful.
Here is the case for putting static content on screen, what it saves, and how to make it work practically.
The Problem With Print
Scale and Quantity
Static content at a live event means print, and usually a lot of it.
Sponsor boards, wayfinding, session information, advertising panels. At the size and quantity a large event requires, that represents significant material use.
Used Once
The fundamental issue is that most of it is single use.
Dated, themed or client-specific graphics have no second life. They are produced, displayed for a day or two, and disposed of - and large-format print is difficult to recycle cleanly.
The Time Cost
There is a practical cost alongside the environmental one.
Print has to be designed, approved, produced, delivered and installed - and any change means starting again. A sponsor confirmed late, a logo supplied wrong, a name misspelled, all become reprints and delays.
Why Screens Change This
An LED display already in the room for stage content can carry static information as well, at no additional material cost.
The screen exists either way. Using more of what it can do is close to free.
Using Screens for Static Content
Sharing the Real Estate
By using areas of a large video screen, you can run dynamic and static content together without separate printed materials.
Sponsor logos between sessions, wayfinding during breaks, session titles as people take their seats - all displayed on a surface already installed.
Arguably More Effective
Screen delivery is not merely less wasteful, it often works better.
Printed sponsor boards are fixed and static. A screen can rotate sponsors, give each one full attention rather than a share of a crowded board, and change what it shows according to the moment in the programme.
For sponsors, exclusive time on a large screen is a stronger proposition than a logo among twenty others.
Changes Are Free
A late addition, a corrected logo or a reordered programme is a file update rather than a reprint.
On events where details firm up close to the day, that flexibility is worth a great deal on its own.
Managing Multiple Displays
We use this approach often enough that we developed our own software for handling the many digital displays running across a large event.
Making It Work
Design for the Screen
Content designed for print does not simply transfer.
Screens have different contrast, different aspect ratios and different viewing distances. Fine detail and small type that work on a printed board can be illegible on a coarse-pitch wall from across a room.
Design to the actual pixel dimensions from the start.
Plan the Rotation
Static content on screen needs a schedule, otherwise it either never appears or appears at the wrong moment.
Decide what shows during arrival, between sessions, over breaks and during the close, and treat it as part of the show running order rather than as filler.
Where Print Still Wins
Screens do not replace everything.
Permanent wayfinding, anything needed where there is no power, and small-format material all remain print jobs. Emergency signage certainly does.
The gain is in reducing large-format single-use print, not eliminating print entirely.
Sustainability in Practice
Sustainability is core to how we work, and this is one of the more straightforward wins available - less waste, lower cost, better flexibility, and content that generally performs better.
Talk to Premier Live about screens and content on 0116 202 9953 or info@premier-ltd.com.
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