The Big Apple City Taxis Updating Their Displays To seem Like iMacs [NYC]

Taxi top displays, those triangular advertisements on top of NYC cabs, have become a facelift. And although it appears like the base of an iMac is now attached to the roof, I believe it looks good. Or in any case better.

The plastic triangles of yore are going to be replaced with these sleek (almost unibody?) aluminum units that pack LED backlighting and straightforward installation. The aluminum works here, it’ll hold up to the tough weather of town and freshen up an otherwise drab cab.

The main target of these new taxi top displays are to make the advertisements stand out, to make it appear to be they’re a crisp image on a monitor as opposed to some cheap-o piece of paper outlined by lights. And for this reason, the most recent design works-the ads look vibrant.

But guess what? New Yorkers don’t give two shits about those ads. All they need to do is in order to hail a cab as fast and as easy as possible. With this new design, the designers promise a more robust backlight on the ” medallion number” which should mean it’ll be easier to tell which cabs are available in (when the medallion number is lit up) and which might be not (when it’s not lit up). The difficulty is it’s not likely to be consistent (not all cabs can have this new taxi top) and it appears like it’ll be harder to peer which cabs come in the daytime.

I’m not wholly convinced that it’s going to be any longer effective than the old model but with the recent design rolling out throughout the month, I assume we’ll find out. [ Bluemap Design via Yanko Design ]

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This post is tagged: advertisements, crisp image, design source, designers, new yorkers, old model, piece of paper