Walgreens LED sign will be Times Square's largest

The Times reports on a gigantic new LED advertising billboard to be installed in Times Square by Walgreens — the largest so far.

The sign will have 12 million light-emitting diodes, known as L.E.D.’s — 17,000 square feet of them, “which is more than a third of an acre,” said Arthur Gilmore, president of the Gilmore Group, a Manhattan design and branding consulting firm, which created the sign. “Including its digital and vinyl decorative components, it will be 43,720 square feet in area.” ... And so, the sign components of the east and west facades of the building, which are 341 feet tall and 143 feet wide, will be programmed “in a synchronized way, as a single animation,” said Meric Adriansen ... The sign will marshal enough candlepower to withstand the sun at high noon. Its images will be projected by 12 million red, green and blue L.E.D.’s programmed to glow in different configurations so that the brains of human observers interpret them as images. A trillion colors are programmable.

Image: Dinosaurs and Robots

How to Stand Out in Times Square? Build a Bigger and Brighter Billboard [NYTimes.com via Racked]