Hardware · Curved and halo

Curved, halo and corner-wrapping tickers

A band that follows the building. Halos above a turntable, ribbons round a reception, loops round an entrance, and rigid right angles where the wall turns a corner.

Two ways round a corner

A rigid right angle. Indoor DX cabinets join at 90° without a gap, so the text scrolls round the corner as one run. Bob Bob Cité’s 77 m ticker turns two of them on the front of the Leadenhall Building. Barton Peveril’s finance hub turns three. Choose this where the architecture is square.

A flexible curve. For a radius, a ring or a wave, Dynamo builds on a flexible 250 mm band at 2, 2.5 or 3 mm. The band is fixed to a curved frame fabricated for the job, so the curve is set by the drawing, not by what a rigid cabinet will allow. This is how halos and ribbons are made.

Halos

A halo is a ring of ticker hung from the ceiling, read from every side. At Auto Trader’s Manchester headquarters a 17.92 m halo hangs over the car turntable and scrolls live figures from the platform: cars added since midnight, cars added in the last hour, total live listings and total views. The data refreshes on a rolling window, so the ring is never static. → Auto Trader project

A halo needs three things agreed early: the ring diameter and drop, the suspension points in the ceiling, and a data source that is already published inside the business. Everything else follows from the drawing.

Ribbons and loops

A ribbon is a curved band along a wall or across a ceiling. China Mobile’s UK headquarters in Slough has a curved ticker round the whole circumference of the entrance, 12,000 × 96 pixels on flexible modules, fixed back to steel and plasterboard and hung from the ceiling in the corner, scrolling welcomes in six languages. → China Mobile project

Auto Trader’s main ribbon curves on two planes at once, 21.76 m long and 1.12 m tall, above the social and café areas. Compound curves cannot be built from rigid cabinets; they need flexible tiles and a frame designed for the curve. → Auto Trader project

Pitch and resolution

Flexible bands are quoted at 2, 2.5 or 3 mm. The resolution of a curved run is derived from the module count on the final drawing and confirmed on the module datasheet with your quote. Viewing angles on flexible tiles are a little narrower than on rigid cabinets, so sightlines across the room are checked before the pitch is fixed.

What to send us

• A plan or a photograph of the space with the route of the band marked.
• The radius or diameter, and the drop from the ceiling for a halo.
• The height of the band, 250 mm as standard.
• What it will show: a feed, your own data, or messages.

We come back with a drawing of the frame, the module, the pitch and a written quote. Curved tickers are always quoted per project.

Related projects

• Auto Trader Manchester HQ: halo ticker and double-curved ribbon → /projects/
• Bob Bob Cité, Leadenhall Building: 77 m with 90° corners → /projects/
• China Mobile, Slough: curved entrance ribbon → /projects/