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

  • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    10 days ago

    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.

    • Tmpod@lemmy.ptM
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      10 days ago

      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.

    • wootz@lemmy.world
      0·
      10 days ago

      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.

  • Tmpod@lemmy.ptM
    0·
    10 days ago

    Here in Portugal, most display useful info like date, time, outside temperature (with varying degrees of accuracy), as well as services provided by the pharmacy or some general (often season specific) health recommendation.

    The use of a bright green sign is, of course, to seek attention, but it’s also useful to quickly spot an open place at night, when most are closed and only a few remain opened longer in each town/city neighborhood (called “farmácias de serviço”, i.e something like “pharmacies in service”; they usually rotate between themselves each week). Nowadays you can check which places are available at night through a nice website, but the signs remain a useful thing, nonetheless.

    The animations are just a culture thing now, I’d guess. Different pharmacies employ different animations, some wackier, some less, though there are very common animations for sure, such as the one where a 3D cross is animated rotating on multiple axis at the same time, making a nice spin back to its original position.
    Why? I dunno, they break up the usual info display and help grab attention? I dunno, you get used to it and it mostly gets filtered into the background hehe

    • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
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      8 days ago

      I’ve seen a colour one like the one I posted below here in Portugal. It really is not an institutionalised thing, it’s just what the owner decides how wacky their place is gonna be.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      9 days ago

      Here in Portugal, most display useful info like date, time, outside temperature (with varying degrees of accuracy),

      We have ones like this in the states too. My favorite near me is at a church. It cycles between temp and date, but the display has too few characters, so instead of just being two screens, date then temp, it’s 3 - day and month, a second screen that just says “/24” and then the temp.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          9 days ago

          They’re more seen at older businesses that have been there forever. Newer ones get newer signs, with more flashy displays.

  • n0x0n@feddit.orgDeutsch
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    10 days ago

    Never seen something like this and I wonder if it wouldn’t trigger epilepsy in some people…

  • MudMan@fedia.io
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    10 days ago

    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.

    • Damage@feddit.it
      0·
      10 days ago

      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.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
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    10 days ago

    Must be a continental thing. Here in noggieland we have a simple illuminated green cross.

  • FalseMyrmidon@kbin.run
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    10 days ago

    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

    • yngmnwntr@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 days ago

      Depends where you’re at in the US. In oregon this symbol is used for cannabis dispensaries, meaning it is extremely common.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
    0·
    10 days ago

    Loads in Morocco as well, they have loads of pharmacies due to all the French influence.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    0·
    10 days ago

    Maybe some of Europe’s surfeit of demo coders had to make their money somehow, and one of them persuaded a pharmacy that paying them to make them a sign with graphics that spin in eyecatching ways would be a good idea, and the rest was history?

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      They don’t even need to persuade individual pharmacies. In my country, there is a trade organization of pharmacies that self-regulates the industry and decides, among other things, on the short list of companies whose crosses are allowed to be installed. There are only 6 so getting on that list will give anyone a huge number of orders.

    • Sparky@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      0·
      10 days ago

      That could be what happened, but at a factory. I’ve noticed that a lot of them have similar graphics, so it might be a preset added in by the manufacturer.

  • Land_Strider@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 days ago

    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.