The Pros and Cons of Digital vs Analog Displays

When brands and designers are evaluating signage for a new lobby, retail floor, or enterprise campus, they tend to start with a screen. Digital displays are familiar, quick to procure, and easy to budget for. But the right format depends on what the installation is being asked to do.

Some installations are built to distribute information, others are designed to become part of the space itself. Those are very different jobs, and they call for different hardware.

Digital Displays: The Pros and Cons

A screen handles video, animation, and rich media, and updates instantly from one central platform. However, with many architects prioritizing screen-free spaces due to consumer digital fatigue, it’s worth being clear-eyed about the limits of digital. A screen is mostly a vehicle for dynamic content, placing the success of a centrally placed screen on content strategy and graphic design, rather than the display itself. A digital sign with weak or static content is just a bright rectangle on the wall.

Upfront cost of digital displays is also lower, with short lead times for off-the-shelf displays. The trade-off arrives later. Keeping a digital display worth looking at means ongoing content creation, scheduling, and system upkeep for the full working life of the screen, and that life is short relative to the space around it.  Screens are also prone to broken pixels and cracks, and draw significantly more power and heat over analog alternatives.

Two examples: The Nolita Hall display in San Diego is built into the architecture of the room, and the retail signage at the Austin Visitor Center does the same job in a busy public space.

Where Analog Displays Win

Analog wins first on attention. Screens are everywhere now, and as a member of our sales team likes to say, “screens are no longer synonymous with luxury or innovation.” One study from the University of Ljubljana back in 2013, the peak of digital innovation, found that only 35% of retail customers back then looked at digital displays at all. Researchers throughout the 2010s compare the effect to “banner blindness,” the way web users learn to tune out repetitive content. 

A true mechanical Split Flap display, for instance, works differently. It uses real motion, mechanical sound, and ADA compliant font to draw attention and focus. In a room full of screens, a moving flap does not read as another screen, but as an installation that make people look up from their phones. Our recent posts on hospitality design and storytelling in design show how mechanical displays serve as signature focal points in modern spaces.

A permanent physical installation such as Split Flap also says something a screen cannot. It shows craftsmanship and real investment in the space. Research from CUNY on physical environmental cues finds that the objects and materials in a room shape how people judge its quality and how well they remember it. A study on storefront window design from the International Business School in Paris found that signage shapes both shopping intent and brand perception, and additional research from the University of South Carolina on retail environmental design states that signage built into the architecture raises how people rate the whole environment. At the end of the day, a Split Flap installation (or our Picture Flap display) has more in common with a feature wall or a piece of public artwork than with consumer electronics.

Oat Foundry’s in-house Split Flap has passed 50 million rotations in testing, roughly 250 years of continuous use.

– “Watch Oat Foundry’s Split Flap Hit a Milestone”

Analog technology also has far less exposure to technological obsolescence than a screen. The original Solari boards stayed in service for decades, and one now sits in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Oat Foundry’s in-house Split Flap has passed 50 million rotations in testing, roughly 250 years of continuous use. Over that kind of lifespan, a well-built display becomes a landmark object in its own right, part of the identity of the space, the way vintage neon signage becomes part of a city’s urban fabric.

Scale is part of why analog holds up in public spaces. Every board is custom-built from scratch for its space, so the layout follows the architecture instead of a standard monitor size, and is legible from up to 100 ft away. That makes a Split Flap practical as a wayfinding or brand anchor in a large lobby or transit hall, not only a feature near a desk. 

Digital vs Analog at a Glance

For a permanent commercial installation, the practical differences come down to a handful of points.

Get an in-depth Split Flap comparison (available via PDF and web) here.

Choosing an Analog Display for Your Space

Oat Foundry is among a few brands that currently sell Split Flaps as commercial installations, and the only US brand that customizes them. While Oat Foundry analog displays and other alternatives all reimagine split flaps, the end product is very different. 

Scaled to fit your space, Oat Foundry’s modules are six-inch modules with 2.5” text, and can be ready from up to 100 ft away, ideal for public spaces. As most similar to the classic Solari boards found in 1950s train halls and airports in terms of size and scale, our Split Flaps can also be customized with a custom-color frame, fonts, symbols, logos, and colored flaps. Oat Foundry’s family of analog technology also includes Picture Flap (an all-image version of Split Flap).