I’ve seen these all over Europe. Some have simple images of the cross flashing, some have windows screensaver esque animations, and some have 3d renders of various things rotating in all sorts of ways. Why is that? Wouldn’t a simple green cross be enough to get the point across, or do they need to be overly verbose? Here’s the full video instead of a gif
Here’s the best video I’ve seen: https://youtu.be/xeN4A_Pr2SU
Some epilepsy patients might get a seizure.
Profit for the pharmacy /s
This brought me joy today, thanks for sharing
lmao never seen such peculiar animations over here, that’s crazy
The video is sped up quite a bit, but I’ve definitely seen them before in Portugal.
Damn, in what region? Never spotted anything like that!
Lisboa. I don’t remember where but it was around the city.
Never seen anything like this in Turkey. We have a simple red on white “E” (first letter of Eczane=Pharmacy) with maybe very timid color change animations, time and/or temperature switches.
As others have pointed out, these look like quite the distracting and cyberpunk dystopian ad signs, most unexpected for a core health institution.
Yo! I’ve been wondering the same thing! I saw those all over Greece and they’re wild. Thought they were like cannabis shops or something lol.
Might just be a UK tbh, never seen this before
I can confirm that they are in the Czech Republic and Italy
It’s a mainland Europe thing.
“annoying” is the “made you look” of advertising.
Can’t really contribute as in Germany most pharmacy signs are pretty static and look kind of like this: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/06/30/20/59/pharmacy-380780_640.jpg
But I also wonder why there’s so many pharmacies in France. In almost any city I’ve been to it’s hard to not have a green flashing cross in sight.
But I also wonder why there’s so many pharmacies in France. In almost any city I’ve been to it’s hard to not have a green flashing cross in sight.
French pharmacies cannot open where they want, there is a limit in how many pharmacy a city can have, on the flip coin, it means that they are relatively evenly spread out across the country, and that even in the so called empty diagonal you`ll find a pharmacy.
Physician do not have this restriction, so many of them go to either Paris or the French riviera, while in rural area in the Northern half, you struggle to find a doctor.
The French are huge fans of medicine.
I don’t think we have those in the US at all.
Anyways it’s probably like that because it’s eye-catching. Eg it’s an ad
Depends where you’re at in the US. In oregon this symbol is used for cannabis dispensaries, meaning it is extremely common.
No one has hacked them to run porn on yet?
Demosceners are paving the way: https://youtu.be/Ea7pn92W-Kg
I love it.
Doom?
I’ve seen them in southern Europe on vacation, but never in the Nordics. Allways thought it was a Iberian/Latin thing (FR, ES, IT, PT). Guess they are more common than I thought.
Can confirm that Norway does not have those signs
They’re slowing creeping in here in Denmark.
There is one around the corner from where I live. It doesn’t display anything but time and temperature (yet), but every time I walk past I secretly hope they’ve fired up the rave machine.
Can confirm that in Portugal, pretty much every single pharmacy has one of these, with varying degrees of wacky 2D/3D animations and info display.
Could you elaborate on “all over Europe”? We don’t have those in Sweden, it looks very very tacky.
In how many countries have you seen these?
I’ve seen them in Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Greece, France (where this particular sign was filmed), Poland, Italy, Spain. That’s all I could remember from the trips I’ve been on in Europe.
NGL those countries seem like they would.
Also very common in South America.
They don’t exist in Germany.
Never seen in Switzerland too.
I mean, the lit-up signs are for visibility. In some countries pharmacies are assigned strict working hours by the government, so it’s useful to see at a glance if a pharmacy is currently open without having to walk right up to the door (and night shifts may require ringing a bell in some of them, so that’s also helpful to convey that they are in fact open).
The fancy animations are just because when signs went from neon-lit to LEDs it turned out not all pharmacists have good design sensibilities. At least as far as I can tell.
This. The big green cross had the purpose of helping people locate open pharmacies, so they already were a sort of advertisement, in a tangential way… when technology allowed for flasher ones, most businesses went for it, because why not.
Must be a continental thing. Here in noggieland we have a simple illuminated green cross.
Wait! That’s a new one for me, what’s noggieland?
Norway
It’s not enough that they’re cross. They want you to be cross too!
Because they’re easy to recognize and consistent? It’s honestly more weird that other areas of the world haven’t followed suit.
