E Ink and Sustainability in Digital Signage
From bus shelters at the FIFA World Cup soccer championship in Qatar last year to guitars and cars that change color and design in real time, E Ink is blazing a trail in digital signage, from DOOH advertising to digital price tags in retail. Tim O’Malley, AVP for the US Regional Business Unit at E Ink, sat down with editor Daniel Brown at The Venetian in Las Vegas during CES 2024 to discuss E Ink technology and the future of sustainable digital signage.
By reducing paper and power usage, E Ink is held to be a key tool in the battle for sustainability in various industries, but it also holds promise in emerging technologies, including entire building surfaces that can change color and design on demand — and, in a recent demo, garments that can do the same, to say nothing of a BMW test car covered in E Ink material and a guitar that changes its skin in real time. Full of insights for cutting edge digital signage and display developments and recent trends, this is a special conversation not to be missed.
“What we wanted to do was sort of wake up the world,” O’Malley said of recent experiments with innovations like BMW’s concept car whose surface incorporates E Ink. The company ethos is very much to break down barriers to creativity, as we are humanly wired naturally to be creative, O’Malley said.
To summarize the ethos, O’Malley gave a favorite mantra about what new products should be, in the company’s view: “Easy to get. Easy to use. Easy to play with.”
As a trained scientist, O’Malley also explained the science of E Ink, along with positive health effects of reducing certain types of blue light (including data from a recent Harvard study commissioned by the company).
O’Malley also noted that one of his personal interests, especially with the advent of color E Ink, is the DOOH potential across surfaces with the technology.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she’s not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
