LED Video Wall Exhibits Marketing Agency’s Artistic Talents

Hogarth is a creative production company with offices worldwide. Founded in 2008, Hogarth has been pivotal in transforming the production landscape over the last 10 years. They are leaders in the field, producing advertising and marketing content for clients across all media and all languages. Their creative production expertise coupled with our powerful workflow and asset management technology deliver high-quality assets, control and savings for global brands.

In 2019, Hogarth completed a top to bottom renovation of its New York City offices. The project included a redesign of the street-level lobby to create a welcoming area where the agency could highlight its work in high-end visual effects and post-production.

Hogarth Worldwide Creative Director Ian St. George Freeman said the main idea behind the new lobby was to establish a space for demonstrating their prowess in creating artistic visual media. “That thinking drove our decision to pursue a video wall,” St. George Freeman said.

Hogarth procured a design bid for a 4x4 LCD video wall but feeling that the proposal lacked the impact they had envisioned, set out to obtain another option and engaged technology solutions provider Diversified.

“Hogarth wanted a solution that was more engaging and visually dynamic,” said Diversified Account Executive Rudy De La Uz. Upon Diversified’s recommendation, Hogarth visited Planar’s nearby New York City Showroom. “Overall, they were very impressed with the range of display technologies that are available,” De La Uz said. “We made our suggestions and worked with Hogarth’s team to formalize a video wall design.”

The engagement resulted in the integration of a nearly 18-foot-long, 8-foot-high Planar® TVF Series LED video wall with a 1.8mm pixel pitch (TVF1.8) in 9x7 configuration. The Planar TVF Series is a family of fine pitch LED video wall displays with a 16:9 aspect ratio that allows every pixel pitch to exactly achieve popular resolutions including Full HD and 4K. With a profile of less than three inches, the Planar TVF Series reduces the overall video wall footprint and is easier to integrate in more spaces compared to other LED video wall solutions.

Building block design streamlines installation

The creative, stackable design of the Planar TVF Series proved beneficial for helping Diversified meet an expedited installation schedule. “From an ingenuity standpoint, the product is fantastic,” De La Uz said. “Efficiency is very important to us as integrators and the way the Planar TVF Series cabinets come together helps make the installation process much simpler.”

Like building blocks, Planar TVF Series video walls are assembled with a single-step process to connect embedded power and signal connectors from cabinet to cabinet by stacking vertically, eliminating cabinet-to-cabinet cabling.

“There are no external jumpers or whips for cabling or power—it’s all done internally within the cabinet itself and because of that there are less failure points,” De La Uz said. “That was a huge advantage for being able to complete the installation on a tight timeframe.”

Digital canvas highlights artistic talents

Integrated in Hogarth’s new lobby entrance, the Planar TVF Series LED video wall is used to show a highlight reel of recent client work from offices around the globe, but a larger purpose involves treating the installation as a digital canvas for displaying custom, experimental and personal work created by Hogarth’s in-house artists. “In terms of content creation, the video wall allows us to showcase the talents of our people,” St. George Freeman said.

With a curtain glass wall built in front of the lobby space, the video wall is visible from the street, creating the sense of a gallery-like environment, according to St. George Freeman. “It’s really about expressing the pride that we have in our work to anyone who might visit or pass by.”

Hogarth involved its artists, animators, editors and compositors in the video wall selection and design process as they would be the ones producing digital content for the video wall.

“Universally, one of the recommendations that everyone gravitated toward was to avoid a standard format,” St. George Freeman said. “Our artists were excited about the prospect of working with an unusual or different-sized digital canvas. Planar was great to work with in this sense because they were so accommodating in allowing us to design the video wall to our own custom specs.”