Displays & Signage

New Georgia State Media Center LED Display Goes Trapezoidal

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 12/14/17

Is trapezoid the new black? That's how style has been defined at Georgia State University's newest facility, the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMMI), set on the campus in downtown Atlanta. The building features three floors with labs and studios for virtual reality production, immersion, making, audio and post-production, data visualization, flex screening and tried-and-true training courses. But the hallmark of the institute sits in the building's lobby, where everybody who walks by can't miss it. That's the 34-foot-long curved display that shows off student work.

Not satisfied with a standard 16:9 rectangle, the media center's leaders chose to use a trapezoidal design for the display. On one end it's 7 feet high; on the other end it's 10 feet high. The display was created by NanoLumens, an Atlanta-based company that designs and produces LED displays. It sits on a wall that's also composed of LED lighting, which enables the entire structure to be programmed to integrate the colors and designs with the onscreen content.

According to NanoLumens, the use of a 3mm pixel pitch gives the display "a truly unique pixel count and display ratio that challenges students to step out of their comfort zone and create digital media projects specifically for this display."

The institute's opening day in October offered an interactive installation by artist Pablo Gnecco, an experiential artist and "motion designer" who runs 9to5, a digital art exhibition that enables the audience to participate in real-time art creation; attendees could use their mobile devices to draw on the display.

The new building "is now, quite literally, a beacon of creativity that enables our students to experiment and prepare for careers in the rapidly changing fields of media and technology," said Elizabeth Strickler, CMII's director of media entrepreneurship and innovation, in a case study about the project. "It's really important to differentiate our program, to show our interactive capability and technological prowess. When we moved forward with the design of a new building, we knew we had an opportunity to provide our students and the larger community that traverses Woodruff Park every day with something novel and exciting." The goal: to create an installation space that featured technology that was better, brighter and more advanced" than previously used projection technology.