Digital menu board

DMB

Explorations over different ways to present relevant information

Cinemark International – the company's arm that oversees 13 South and Central American countries – runs a total of 192 theaters (as of January 2024).

With almost 100 theaters, Cinemark is a pretty major player in Brazil. Colombia and Argentina come in second with about 1/3 of that, each.

For a reason or another, some markets are more open to evolve and explore their digital communication. Cinemark Colombia and Chile play main roles when it comes to trying out new visual languages.

Menu board Cinemark Colombia

This menu board language was the first departure from Cinemark's traditional red-on-white theme. It was first suggested as a "bistro concession" concept - a separate selling proposition.

Vertical menu boards were well evaluated. Cinemark asked me to design a proposed evolution of their then current visual language. I created a mock up some screens to exemplify the experience, different elements displayed.

S.Paulo Comic-Con Experience

Cinemark sponsors the local Comic Con with a concession stand on the show floor. This menu board was displayed in two 60" screens side by side, and switched back and forth with the promotional combos clip.

Cinemark box office timetable iterations

The timetable I designed went through numerous versions and changes. Here's a sample with different lower-third options:

I designed this timetable with the worst case scenario in mind:

In that way, once I put the puzzle pieces together it was possible to adapt it to any local market.

A information heavy price table

This is is how I managed a big amount of data: the local currency with 5 digits (I believe this one's from Chile), the abundance of screening options by different days of the week, and all local exceptions.

My final efforts at Mog was trying to standardize the font used for at least one of their communication channels.

This one's called Corbert. It has that Eurostile 90's vibe (despite being a font from 2010) with great legibility.

Blocks of information, Lab concepts

The design concept is atomic design. I designed items to be pulled and placed automatically by the server-run scripts. These examples are early experiments that eventually evolved into what Cinemark runs now in Latin America:

The building bricks/layers are: animation background, prices background and item compositions. Prices and product names are code pulled from their database and rendered in real time over the graphics elements.

They appear this way, in a 2x1 configuration.

On occasion I find interesting present some outlandish, unconventional concept for our clients and earn some critique. The purpose is to sow a seed of an idea – perhaps another direction to explore? – and open a dialogue.

Cirque du Soleil

This is Cirque du Soleil concession digital menu board I designed when they stopped by S.Paulo, Brazil.

This promotional 4 screen switches back and forth with the actual products prices.

Conclusion • Learnings

When you're designing something with a potentially big impact, half the battle is gathering data. This means looking at past research, previous attempts (both the successes and the misses), and the client's direct feedback. It's all about understanding where the client wants to take their message.


In UX design, there's less focus on flashy visuals and more emphasis on the user experience and the hard data that drives the final result. We're basically on a quest to find the perfect visual answer for a specific problem and its intended solution.

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