E Ink wins FLEXI Award for product innovation

 

E Ink Holdings (Billerica, Massachusetts and Hsinchu, Taiwan), a leading innovator of electronic ink technology, announced it has been named a 2018 FLEXI Awards winner for Product Innovation by the FlexTech Alliance for DAZZLE, the world’s largest media façade enabled by flexible E Ink electrophoretic displays.

Unveiled in September 2017 at the San Diego International Airport's new rental car center, DAZZLE is the first outdoor art installation to use E Ink Prism. Designed by Ueberall International, this remarkable technical and manufacturing achievement enhances visitors’ experience through more than 2000 individual tiles that display custom, dynamic animations across the 1600-foot long façade. The installation is visible to hundreds of thousands of airport visitors and motorists on the Interstate 5 Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway.

“E Ink has long been recognised as the leader of electrophoretic displays for electronic readers,” said Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, chief technology officer at FlexTech. “This award demonstrates the vast capabilities of ePaper, and DAZZLE is definitely a milestone for the company. We look forward to seeing the next architectural developments that E Ink creates.”

The durable, flexible and low-power properties of E Ink displays made this installation possible, as each module is powered solely by small flexible solar cells and the integrated display module is affixed to the façade with adhesive. No power cables were required on the façade, and each tile communicates with the other and with the network base via wireless routers nestled in nearby trees. Each Prism ePaper tile is a parallelogram and arranged in a pattern on the facade to create an overall dynamic visual effect, even when the pixels are not changing. The animations can evoke many sensations like water ripples, moving traffic, dancing snowflakes or shifting geometries.

“It is an honour to be recognised by the FlexTech Alliance for our continued work in helping to evolve the flexible and printed electronics industry,” said Michael McCreary, chief technology officer at E Ink. “DAZZLE is a testament that commercial, flexible, reflective displays have a place in architecture and design and we look forward to enabling many new architectural installations of E Ink Prism in the future including colour.”

Caption: The DAZZLE outdoor installation at San Diego International Airport (photo: E Ink)