What to put on a lobby screen.
Office lobbies end up playing one of six things: ambient nature and light, abstract motion and color, the building and its tenants, something seasonal, announcements, or a commissioned film. Here is when each one works, how a portrait screen changes the choice, and where each kind of content comes from.
The six
What goes on the screen.
Ambient nature and light
Water, weather, trees, sunlight moving across a surface. This is the default for a reason: it is calm, it suits most lobbies, and nobody has to look at it for it to work. A tall screen takes tall things especially well, such as rain on glass, a waterfall, or a forest seen from the floor up.
Abstract motion and color
Shape and movement in the building's own colors. It carries a brand without putting a logo on the screen, and it sits comfortably in a modern lobby where a photographic scene can look like a screensaver.
The building itself and its tenants
Tenant logos, a welcome for a firm moving in, an anniversary, a floor that has just been finished. Everything here needs the tenant's sign-off before it goes up.
Seasonal and holidays
The change people notice. Put it up the week before, not the morning of, and take it down before it goes stale. A building that marks the season on its screen reads as a building somebody is looking after.
Announcements
Use these sparingly. A lobby screen is not a notice board, and a screen that is mostly notices stops being looked at, which costs you the one time you need it read. Keep it to the few things everyone in the building has to know.
A commissioned film
Save this for the one thing a year that has to be exactly right: the building's story, a founding tenant, a rebrand. Hire an agency and shoot it. That is what agencies are for, and no subscription replaces it.
Tall, not wide
Portrait changes the choice.
A portrait screen is not a landscape screen turned on its side, and content chosen for one looks wrong on the other. Three things change.
What fits the frame
One tall thing reads well: a tree, a figure, falling water, a column of light. A wide scene loses its sides, and everything that made it work goes with them.
Viewing distance
A lobby screen is read from across the room and from the door, not from arm's length. Detail that only works close up is wasted, and slow movement carries further than fast cutting.
Text
Keep text short and large, or leave it out. A line of text on a screen that tall is a sign, and a sign that cannot be read from the entrance is not doing anything.
Sourcing
Where the content comes from.
You can buy stock clips, hire an agency, subscribe to an art collection, use a video generator, or use Implicit. Here is the work each option involves.
A stock library
Licence clips by the clip or by subscription, and start the same afternoon. Much of it is wide; portrait clips are fewer and still not made for your screen, so a tall screen usually gets something cropped or stretched. It is not about your building, and somebody still has to choose the clips and put them up, every time.
A production agency
You get a film made for you, to your standards, by people who do it for a living. An agency gives you a quote and a production schedule for each film. It is right for the one big film, and hard to justify for content that has to change with the season.
A curated art subscription
You get somebody else's taste, changed for you on a schedule. It looks good and takes almost no effort. You choose from their collection; nothing in it is made for your building, your tenants or your season.
A video generator, used yourself
Type instructions into a generator and it gives you a clip at a time, which you then assemble. It is the most flexible option and the most work: you learn the tool's habits, pay per attempt, and join the clips into something long enough to play in a lobby. Getting your own logo to look the same in every clip is the part that takes the most practice.
Implicit
Implicit makes videos to fit your lobby screen, and you choose what they show. You say what you have in mind in plain words; there is no prompting to learn. You watch the whole video in a browser, change any scene you do not like, add your logos, and put it on the screen yourself. Nothing goes on a screen unless you put it there.
No hardware required. Our player runs on most media servers, with very little network bandwidth. How it works →
It costs from $150 a month for 1 screen, and every month includes 100 credits of new video; more credits are $1 each from $50. It is free to try.
Questions people ask.
- What is the safest thing to put on a lobby screen?
- Something calm and always on: nature, light, or abstract motion in the building's colors. It asks nothing of the people walking past, it does not date, and it takes the least review of any choice on the list.
- How often should the screen change?
- There is no right answer, so pick a rhythm you can actually keep. A season is easy to keep. Weekly changes are practical when someone can make and approve them without much work.
- Can we put our tenants' logos on the screen?
- Yes. Logos sit on top of whatever is playing, so a tenant's mark can go up, move or come down without the video underneath changing. Get the tenant's sign-off first: it is their brand. Tenant logos on a lobby screen →
- Does a portrait screen need different content from a landscape one?
- Yes. A tall frame holds one tall thing well and a wide scene badly, and a lobby screen is read from across the room, so anything small in the frame is lost. Content made wide and cropped to tall gives away that it was made for another screen. Portrait video for tall screens →
- What should not go on a lobby screen?
- Avoid cluttered notices, text too small to read from the door, and tenant branding the tenant has not approved.
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