The Task

A real estate developer reached out to us last year about doing the marketing strategy and materials for a property of theirs in a prime location in New York City.

The location of the new construction space is right on Fifth Avenue, directly across from the Empire State Building. This is the most walked street in New York and has huge potential as a flagship store for an international brand. Included in the task was designing and installing a 60' x 17' billboard in front of the space while it was under construction.

Our Proposed Solution

We brainstormed a lot of different ideas and strategies, including sixty foot wide pen drawings and clean graphics.

We decided that rather than a simple graphic billboard, it would be more effective to create a realistic rendering of what the potential space could look like when standing in front of the Empire State Building. This would make the future interior look realistic to anyone walking by or standing in line, waiting to go up to the observation deck.

3d Modeling the Interior

We created different designs for the potential store interior and eventually decided on a final design that was clean and modern. We set a camera within the model and rendered the space from what would be the location of the front door of the empire state building.

Execution is Key

We set up the file to be high resolution at full scale, all 60’ wide! There was a lot of time and effort in the post production phase of the rendering to ensure that it looked as realistic as possible with the real lighting of the space. We tested out various graphics and lighting to make sure that, even though this would be a physical print, that it still looked like space in 3d with depth and even people and furniture. But, of course the client and broker wanted a giant "available" sign over the top of the image, which in my opinion, ruins the image. Oh well..

Go See it in Person

If you’re in New York City or visiting sometime soon, you can walk by the real printed rendering. It’s installed at 345 Fifth avenue. If you do go see it, you'll notice that from across Fifth Avenue, it's hard to tell who's a real person and who's printed on the image. Go check it out and let me know what you think!

Ciao for now, Steemians.

- Weston (aka @design-guy)