Commercial digital signage and menu boards for Chicago venues, including multi-pane layouts that put your own promotion in the middle of the screen.
Most venues buy screens one job at a time. This one shows the menu, that one shows the game, the one by the door shows a welcome loop. So a room ends up with more displays than it needs, each doing a fraction of what it could, and the wall behind the bar becomes a hardware collection rather than a system. The assumption underneath is that a screen shows one thing. A commercial display does not work that way, and the difference is not subtle once you see it running.
A large portrait panel can carry three panes inside one display. Two of them do what you were already going to do, and the middle one is where your promotion lives: a special, an event, a new item, whatever needs to be in front of people at that moment. It is the same glass, the same mount, and the same power. What makes it work is a commercial panel with pixel-by-pixel control, a source that can drive the layout, and content built to the right dimensions, which is why we hand over layout documentation rather than leaving your designer guessing at the canvas.
From the Loop and Magnificent Mile to Fulton Market, Logan Square, and the suburbs, we design and install commercial digital signage, menu boards, and outdoor displays.
Anything outdoors or near an entry sits through months of freezing weather, so exposed hardware gets rated for it rather than sheltered and hoped over.
Repeated cycling works on enclosures and mounts harder than the cold itself, so outdoor installations get rated for the full range.
Wind loads anything mounted outside, so mounting gets chosen for load rather than convenience.
Heat is the single most expensive variable in how long anything lasts, so enclosed cabinets get ventilation and equipment spaces get cooling.
How we work
No display gets specified from a floor plan. What the wall is, where people look, how much light lands on it, and what the content has to do decide the answer.
We do not quote a display until we have walked the wall, because four things there decide the specification and none appear on a drawing. What the wall is made of and what backing exists behind it, which in older Chicago buildings is frequently the constraint that settles everything. Sightlines, meaning where people actually stand and what they are looking at. The light in that spot at the brightest hour. Safety matters too, particularly anywhere the public passes underneath.
You see the design before you commit to equipment, including a Good, Better, and Best option per location and, where a layout has multiple panes, the exact dimensions each one needs. That documentation goes to whoever produces your content so they are designing to the real canvas rather than sending artwork that gets cropped. One team handles the install, calibration, staff training, and documentation, and coordinates with your general contractor, electrician, and IT department.
Then we work out what belongs on the screen and how often it changes, because that decides whether you need one panel or several. A room where the menu shifts weekly, a promotion runs alongside it, and a live feed matters in the evening is a candidate for a multi-pane layout rather than three separate displays. A lobby running a fixed loop is not. Getting that right usually reduces the screen count and increases what each one does, which is the opposite of how these projects normally go.
What we build
Digital signage is a display, a source, a network path, and a content plan. Here is what we design, program, and install.
Pixel-by-pixel control is what lets one commercial display carry more than one thing at once. Custom layouts divide a panel into regions: ribbons, splits, a picture inside a picture, or on a large portrait display three panes stacked, with the middle one commonly carrying your promotion. Live programming can occupy one region while your content occupies another, on the same screen, which frequently means fewer displays doing more. We provide the dimension documentation for every layout so content arrives built for the canvas it will actually sit in.
Digital menu boards get sized off real reading distance from where people queue, mounted at a height a standing guest reads without stepping back, and driven from one place so a price change or a sold-out item reaches every screen at once. The source is the part nobody shops for and the part that decides whether the system gets used: a commercial content-management and scheduling engine, reachable from a phone or laptop anywhere, that schedules by daypart and pushes to one site or all of them. Without it, a screen is a monitor.
A lot of Chicago retail and hospitality sits in old buildings, so mounting is the first question rather than the last: masonry, plaster, and unknown backing decide what can safely hang and where cable can run, and that gets established before anything is ordered. Anything facing the street through glass needs brightness specified for real daylight with ambient sensing. Outdoor and entry-adjacent installations get rated for freeze and thaw rather than for the season they went in, since the cycle is what fails hardware here.
The technical part
Three technical realities decide whether signage keeps working: whether the content fits the canvas, whether you keep control of the screen, and what the climate does to anything exposed.
A multi-pane layout is a design decision that reaches past the hardware, because content produced for a full screen looks wrong squeezed into a third of one. Text sizes that read at a distance in a full-frame layout become unreadable in a ribbon. So the layout gets fixed early and documented with real pixel dimensions per region, and that documentation goes to whoever makes your artwork. Skipping it is the most common reason a good layout looks amateur: the panels are right and the content was built for a different shape.
Anything outdoors or near an entry here sits through months of freezing weather and repeated freeze and thaw cycling, which is harder on enclosures and mounts than the cold itself, so exposed installations get rated for the full range rather than the season they were installed in. Wind off the lake loads anything mounted outside. On the inside, heat is the single most expensive variable in how long anything lasts, so enclosed cabinets get ventilation and equipment spaces get cooling and stay at or below 75 degrees.
Panels carry a rated runtime describing the daily duty they were engineered for: roughly two to three hours a day for consumer sets, sixteen, eighteen, or continuous for commercial tiers. Commercial displays also accept wired control over RS-232 or IP, where a consumer set depends on an infrared emitter glued near its sensor that eventually fails and strands the screen. On warranties, keep two numbers apart. Panel warranty is typically three years commercial against one consumer, and consumer terms generally do not cover business use. System lifecycle is separate, closer to seven years.
Yes, on a commercial display, and it is usually the highest-return decision available. Pixel-by-pixel control means a panel can be divided into regions rather than showing one source full-frame, so custom layouts give you ribbons, splits, a picture inside a picture, or on a large portrait display three panes stacked. In practice two of those do what you were already planning, and the middle one carries your promotion: a special, an event, a new item. Same glass, same mount, same power. Two things make it work. A panel and a source capable of driving the layout, which rules out a consumer set with a stick in the back. The second is content built to the right dimensions, which is why we hand over layout documentation with real pixel sizes per region rather than leaving your designer to guess.
Nine times out of ten the content was produced for a different shape than the one it is sitting in. A layout that divides a display into regions changes the canvas completely: text sized to read from across a room in a full-frame design becomes unreadable squeezed into a ribbon, logos get cropped, and margins that looked generous disappear. The panels are fine and the artwork was built for the wrong dimensions. The fix is unglamorous and it works: fix the layout early, document the exact pixel dimensions for each region, and give that documentation to whoever makes your content. We do that as part of the design rather than treating it as the client's problem to discover, because a layout nobody can produce content for is worse than no layout.
More than you would expect, provided mounting is the first conversation rather than a discovery during installation. In older Chicago buildings the constraint is usually what is behind the finish, since masonry, plaster, and unknown backing decide whether a display can hang where the design wants it and where cable can run. So we establish that on the walk, prefer routes and fixings that attach to structure or to your own millwork rather than into somebody else's finishes, and favor attachments that come off cleanly, which matters at lease end and generally gets approved faster. Where something needs a landlord's sign-off, we identify it during design with a fallback in the drawings rather than discovering it two days before an install.
You do, from wherever you are, and this is the part worth buying properly. The screen is not the product. The source behind it is: a commercial content-management and scheduling engine that lets you log in from a phone or a laptop, see your locations, and either schedule content by daypart or push a change immediately. Breakfast content comes down at eleven without anyone remembering. A new promotion goes into the middle pane across every site at once. If you run several locations, that single point of control is the reason the system pays for itself, since the alternative is somebody driving between sites with a laptop. We set it up, train your team, and leave documentation on site.
What We Do Here
Every system is designed, installed, and supported by our own team in Chicago — never subcontracted.
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The way you can do different layouts on different TVs, so the marketing team can do their own in-house advertisements — that was really a big thing. Just for them to be able to upload their photos on their own and choose what dates to do it on is really helpful.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The way you can do different layouts on different TVs, so the marketing team can do their own in-house advertisements — that was really a big thing. Just for them to be able to upload their photos on their own and choose what dates to do it on is really helpful.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
We don’t sell you what we have. We design what you need. That line is the operating principle I’ve built Crunchy Tech around for the last 20 years. And it’s the single sentence that separates us - and the small handful of firms like us - from the other 97% of the commercial AV industry.
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There’s a pattern I’ve watched play out for 20 years in hospitality AV, and it always ends the same way...
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Walk with me for a second. Pick any sports bar on your street. Go in. Sit at the bar. Look around. And tell me what you see.
Read article arrow_forwardTell us about the venue: what kind of space it is, how many screens you have or want, what each one is supposed to show, whether any face daylight or sit outdoors, what your building or landlord allows, who produces your content, and whether you run more than one location. We will walk the walls before quoting anything, then come back with Good, Better, and Best per location plus the layout dimensions your designer will need.
