I’ve seen these all over Europe. Some have simple images of the cross flashing, some have windows screensaver esque animations, and some have 3d renders of various things rotating in all sorts of ways. Why is that? Wouldn’t a simple green cross be enough to get the point across, or do they need to be overly verbose? Here’s the full video instead of a gif
I mean, the lit-up signs are for visibility. In some countries pharmacies are assigned strict working hours by the government, so it’s useful to see at a glance if a pharmacy is currently open without having to walk right up to the door (and night shifts may require ringing a bell in some of them, so that’s also helpful to convey that they are in fact open).
The fancy animations are just because when signs went from neon-lit to LEDs it turned out not all pharmacists have good design sensibilities. At least as far as I can tell.
This. The big green cross had the purpose of helping people locate open pharmacies, so they already were a sort of advertisement, in a tangential way… when technology allowed for flasher ones, most businesses went for it, because why not.
Also very common in South America.
They don’t exist in Germany.
Here’s the best video I’ve seen: https://youtu.be/xeN4A_Pr2SU
You’re missing out, those are the tamer ones these days. https://youtu.be/x6Alv2Z347c?si=c_a2IkCBLB4AL4zo
A compilation in reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/musichaiku/comments/153qvqo/pharmacies_in_europe_and_their_rave_signs/
LMAO the part where it just starts displaying a bunch of pills flying at the screen
There’s a guy who bought 3 of this and set them as the lights for a rave at a venue, was pretty funny
Also now that I think of it, has anyone played bad apple on one of those?
Haven’t seen it done, but it’s just a matter of time
Hahaha I’ve seen some of those animations in their natural habitats
Because they are cool, that’s why.
I’m pretty sure that’s just kind of a tradition, I don’t remember exactly tho
Maybe some of Europe’s surfeit of demo coders had to make their money somehow, and one of them persuaded a pharmacy that paying them to make them a sign with graphics that spin in eyecatching ways would be a good idea, and the rest was history?
They don’t even need to persuade individual pharmacies. In my country, there is a trade organization of pharmacies that self-regulates the industry and decides, among other things, on the short list of companies whose crosses are allowed to be installed. There are only 6 so getting on that list will give anyone a huge number of orders.
That could be what happened, but at a factory. I’ve noticed that a lot of them have similar graphics, so it might be a preset added in by the manufacturer.
Because they’re easy to recognize and consistent? It’s honestly more weird that other areas of the world haven’t followed suit.
Never seen something like this and I wonder if it wouldn’t trigger epilepsy in some people…
“annoying” is the “made you look” of advertising.
That’s fucking annoying to look at.
Here in Portugal, most display useful info like date, time, outside temperature (with varying degrees of accuracy), as well as services provided by the pharmacy or some general (often season specific) health recommendation.
The use of a bright green sign is, of course, to seek attention, but it’s also useful to quickly spot an open place at night, when most are closed and only a few remain opened longer in each town/city neighborhood (called “farmácias de serviço”, i.e something like “pharmacies in service”; they usually rotate between themselves each week). Nowadays you can check which places are available at night through a nice website, but the signs remain a useful thing, nonetheless.
The animations are just a culture thing now, I’d guess. Different pharmacies employ different animations, some wackier, some less, though there are very common animations for sure, such as the one where a 3D cross is animated rotating on multiple axis at the same time, making a nice spin back to its original position.
Why? I dunno, they break up the usual info display and help grab attention? I dunno, you get used to it and it mostly gets filtered into the background hehe
