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Designer/artist Brian Henry adds flair to new Fashion Show plaza

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The revamped plaza at the Fashion Show mall on the Strip.

If you’ve passed the Fashion Show mall on Las Vegas Boulevard in the past couple of months, you’ve seen its expanded and enhanced front plaza, now enveloped by roughly 10,000 square feet of LED screens, including those wrapped around the columns holding up the towering Cloud canopy. While the company behind their design, Daktronics, is based in South Dakota, the brilliant images they transmit are almost entirely homegrown.

Local sign designer Brian Henry is one of Las Vegas' most visible artists, from various galleries of the 18b Arts District to the LED marquees of Aria and the LINQ. Given his grasp of the city's visual identity and innovations on the Strip, which include the 3D-friendly display above SLS’ Shot Bar and the 300-foot screen on Harmon Corner, Brian Henry Design’s winning bid to create content for the mall’s new digital canvases—a creative collaboration with New York company Show+Tell—is a no-brainer.

How Henry was going to synchronize content across multiple screens scattered across such an expansive space was less obvious, though his pedigree and perspective enabled him to work through the plaza’s unique complexities.

“The Fashion Show is really interesting, because it’s three completely different displays that relate to one another,” he says. “Special considerations had to be made because not every part of every sign is visible from every location. We had to consider each audience, whether someone was in the [Fashion Show] plaza or in their car or on a bridge coming over from the Wynn. That varies dramatically from a conventional screen [with] one display. If you think of [the screens at] Aria or Harmon or even the Linq … it’s really all about the primary screen. This one is about creating a whole environment from three screens.”

While Show+Tell strategized an interactive element using its expertise with social media (Instagram users will soon be able to post their images on the screens), Henry created new content that found a balance between aesthetic and marketing, from retailer spots to animated mood vignettes depicting, among other things, famous Las Vegas imagery. “It’s a challenge to have something visually interesting but accomplishes the goals of the brand. It’s totally something I enjoy.”

Henry will also oversee a Show+Tell-initiated program allowing on-the-rise artists to provide content for the displays, which means Vegas-based artists could see their creations projected out to the millions of tourists transversing the Strip/Spring Mountain intersection, giving more locals a role in shaping the personality of their city’s most iconic street. Which raises the question: Is LED the new neon? Almost, says Henry, who sees a parallel in how the otherwise disparate art forms are used. “LED is really flexible. It’s obviously different from neon in that the content can be changed in an instant. But all that content must be appropriate and carefully considered and designed to be effective, just like those old neon signs. Content is the medium, but LED is the vehicle. So, really, content is the new neon.”

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