Commercial Displays
SurfaceID developed LCD screens for a wide range of uses. The first and biggest was the New York City subway, followed by many other transit systems across North America. Next came the cinema movie walls at ArcLight Sherman Oaks and ArcLight Hollywood in California. After that, the screens went into hundreds of retail installations for brands like Ogilvy, Starbucks, Red Bull, H&M, Audi and BMW, and the list keeps growing. All of this was done for our main client, Videri.
A lobby wall about 50 ft wide and 15 ft tall at ArcLight Sherman Oaks, with a second movie wall at ArcLight Hollywood.
Poster-thin screens on subway walls, corridors and train platforms.
Windows, shelf walls and showrooms for brands like BMW, H&M and Red Bull.
How each application was engineered, from the first subway screen to the store wall.
When SurfaceID began working with Videri in 2012, subway advertising in New York was still overwhelmingly a printed poster business. Outfront Media (then CBS Outdoor), the company behind the ads on NYC Subway walls and platforms, was about to become Videri’s biggest customer. Over the next eight years, the screens SurfaceID developed for Videri helped turn those poster frames into a connected digital network.
Outfront and Videri announced an exclusive partnership in December 2014. In November 2015, Outfront launched its ON Smart Media platform, built on Videri technology, at New York’s new 34th St–Hudson Yards station. From there, the screens rolled out across North American transit systems, on subway walls, train platforms and station entrances.
None of this came easily. Turning a thin, good-looking screen into a product that could survive a subway platform took years of mechanical engineering, industrial design and hands-on prototyping. It was a long and expensive process, and every new model raised problems we had to solve from scratch.
From 2012 to 2020, SurfaceID developed the LCD screens for Videri. Our industrial designers and engineers took each display from concept through prototyping to production-ready hardware: the panel architecture, enclosures, mounting systems, thermal management and electronics packaging.
The goal was a screen that looked less like a television and more like a printed poster: flat, thin, nearly borderless and easy to install in places never designed for electronics. We reduced display depth from the typical industry range of 50–100 mm to an ultra-slim 12.7 mm profile, including structure, mounting hardware, antennas and electronics.
Reaching 12.7 mm meant changing how the LCD panels themselves were built. Our team travelled to Korea and China to work directly with major panel makers, including LG and Samsung, on how to build an ultra-thin LCD.
SurfaceID engineers taught new assembly approaches and helped re-engineer their manufacturing processes, producing panels far thinner than the factories had been able to make on their own, with minimal borders and maximum viewable area.
Over the life of the program, SurfaceID prototyped and built dozens of display models, each with its own waterproof enclosure, from the ground up.
Built for the subway. Station walls are cleaned with high-pressure wash systems, and the displays face dust, moisture and vibration every day. SurfaceID engineered waterproof enclosures with seamless glass faces, precision gasketing and integrated thermal management, using CNC-machined and die-cast aluminum housings with sandblasted finishes instead of conventional sheet metal.
Connected by design. Integrated LTE antennas and wireless content management meant each screen could be updated remotely, without running data cable through century-old station walls.
Mounted to last. Ultra-low-profile mounting systems fastened the displays directly to concrete and tile, keeping the screen nearly flush with the wall.
Industrial design
Mechanical and electrical engineering
Starting at 34th St–Hudson Yards in 2015, the screens became part of Outfront’s digital network across North American subway systems and commuter rail platforms.
They were mounted on station walls and entrances, in corridors and on platforms, carrying advertising and transit information to millions of riders every day.
The same technology scaled up into giant video walls. In 2016, Cinema Scene Marketing installed the “StoryWall” in the lobby of ArcLight Cinemas Sherman Oaks in Los Angeles. Built on Outfront’s ON Smart Media platform and Videri technology, it used 96 screens to form a single image roughly 50 ft wide and 15 ft tall.
At launch it was billed as the largest digital lobby display in the US cinema industry. Similar movie walls followed in other theatres, including on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
Walls like these created a new set of engineering problems. A single image might span dozens of screens, so ultra-thin bezels, precision alignment systems and tight installation tolerances were essential: a fraction of a millimetre out of place shows.
Behind the screens, SurfaceID developed large structural mounting systems to carry the weight while holding every display in position. Pop-out mounts let technicians replace a single screen in the middle of a wall without removing the ones around it.
The same poster-thin screens moved naturally into stores. At 12.7 mm deep and hung almost flush, a display can sit in a window, on a shelf wall or next to a product without looking like a TV, and its content can be updated remotely across many locations at once.
Over the years the screens went into hundreds of retail installations for brands and agencies including:
Photos courtesy of Videri. See more installations at videri.com.
Videri’s Spark Series, built on the display platform SurfaceID engineered, won Digital Signage Technology of the Year at the 2024 AV Magazine Awards.
Award presented to Videri Inc. by AV Magazine, November 2024.
When this project began, digitizing the subway meant fitting electronics into spaces built for paper. SurfaceID’s job was to make the screens thin, tough and serviceable enough to belong there.
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Ninety-six portrait LCDs, one 50-foot image, and a wall built so any screen can be serviced with a single push. The finished StoryWall running one image across every screen, with the crew still on ladders for final checks. For years the poster wall in the lobby of ArcLight Cinemas Sherman Oaks was part of the […]
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