Art Exhibitions Digital Signage: Best Practices

Art digital signage is a thing of beauty. It’s a tool that can make your gallery, convention, exhibition center, or museum more alive. Sparkling with colors, giving interactivity, and boosting engagement, it’s fantastic way to digitize your venue and bring more visitors. 

As we progress more into the 21st century, the line between the physical and digital gets blurred. That’s why the art venues should keep up and look for new means to stay relevant.

Digital signage for convention and exhibition centers works in two ways. First of all, it can enhance the experience for visitors. If you deploy screens in your gallery they can create a special visual atmosphere and display whichever content you want. Secondly, it can exist as art itself. We’ll talk about it in this article. 

Digital signage as a way to impress

Art exhibitions evoke strong feelings. People go there to feel emotions, to understand what the artists were willing to say, to have a high-quality inspirational time. Maybe it is a date, maybe it’s a guided tour. There are many reasons why art is important and why people invest their time in seeing it. For a venue, the main priority is to give those people the best experience. In other words, it’s essential to impress. 

The screens may be the best way to do just that. The venues can transform the exhibition halls by adding art digital signage. Its versatility means that you will have multiple approaches at play giving you flexibility in content delivery. 

Best practices of digital signage use

Here are some of the ways digital signage for convention and exhibition centers can be used:

1) as a wayfinding tool

Example: 

You’re running a contemporary arts center with many levels and rooms. It is visited by hundreds daily as your institution is one of the main sights of the destination. The organization of the movement of the visitors is a very important aspect of the correct and hassle-free functioning of the venue. 

By installing screens you’re able to make this process smooth and direct. The display can easily guide people, provide a map of the place, give visitors different thematic paths, and add the gamification side to the experience. Screens can be placed at the entrance as well as in all the principal halls and rooms of the venue. 

2) as a queue management system 

Example: 

Queues suck. Everyone knows that. Also, in the case of the art centers, queues reflect the high general interest in the exhibitions inside (which is not a bad thing). But it’s how you handle it that matters for the visitor. 

Deploying a digital signage queueing system changes the experience completely. Take time to understand the flow of people flows at your venue. Get strategic with the queue management, divide visitors into different categories, designate areas for separate groups. And ultimately use digital signage to power up this whole system. With the proper planning, you can be sure that adding displays to your queue management approaches will guarantee a better visitor experience. 

3) as a messaging and alert tool

In the times of a worldwide fight with the coronavirus pandemic, art venues have felt the negative effects of the lockdowns. And there’s a new reality too, the one with social distancing as a new norm. In order to make sure that everyone is safe visiting your indoor premises it’s important to broadcast the relevant health-related information. Screens are the best channel to do that. You can show informational content instantly, it can be highly visual and straightforward. 

4) as an informational aide

Art is a very nuanced domain and it takes time to fully grasp. Displays will make this process better. You can add the small screens to the separate rooms or to each of the art pieces showing the information related to the piece or the hall. It also can be interactive and the visitors can use screens to discover more about the art they’re experiencing. 

5) as a part of an exhibition itself

As we mentioned before, screens are great at impressing and engaging with those who look at them. Or, to be more precise, it’s not the screen per se, it’s the content it’s showing. One of the coolest applications of art digital signage is using it to create a certain atmosphere in the exhibition hall by using the visual capabilities that the displays possess. 

Example: 

You may run an exhibition of Dutch Masters with a focus on the landscapes. While it can be shown as it is, you can also use technology to enhance the experience by adding screens showing the beautiful Netherlands-related content. For example, you can show the same landscapes drawn on the paintings now or create visual patterns that are reflecting the color palette on the oeuvres. All of it to make the visitors fall in love with your venue and have the best visitor experience possible. 

6) outdoor digital signage as public art

Digital signage can be an art. Galleries can collaborate with artists to create amazing outdoor digital pieces. In the era of the internet and NFTs, displays are the tools that connect two worlds and they can be effectively used to convey the message and sell art.

7) to add interactivity to the experience 

The exhibition venues of the future are all about interactivity. People are very used to using their devices so why not add this aspect into the way your place is engaging with the visitors. Screen technology allows you to talk directly to the patrons by the means of the digital medium. You can run quests, give QR links to the internet pages, facilitate the use of your venue’s mobile app (if you have one). 

Also, another great application would be promoting your social media channels through digital signage. You can ask people to follow your profiles, run various contests, promote specific hashtags, gather user-generated content. This way you’re in direct communication with your visitors and making sure that you hear all their feedback about being at your venue. 

Digital signage is a great step into the future

By using the screens properly you’re giving your place a complete digital makeover. It matters in this time of rapid technological development. While many venues may still use static signage solutions, the screens have much more power and you can rely on them to execute complex content tasks.

However, the displays on their own don’t bring results, the content strategy does. So make sure that you have a plan of how the screens will help your venue and what kind of content you need for that. This way you will be able to create a truly unique experience that is going to impress your visitors.