When people talk about Times Square, they usually mention that it’s crowded, bright, and full of billboards. So many billboards, in fact, that it’s hard to look at each one. Most people look at a billboard in Times Square for only about 6 seconds -- providing a huge challenge to advertisers who want to convey a message.

One of the billboards in Times Square has caught my attention -- and far more than 6 seconds of it, too. I’m one of many who has stood outside the new Forever 21 store, staring at their billboard for minutes at a time.

The Forever 21 billboard was designed by a digital agency called space150. The billboard, which is directly above a part of Times Square with significant pedestrian traffic, features a model wearing Forever 21 clothes. To make things interesting, she’s walking in front of an image of the crowd standing outside of the store. If being visible on a Times Square billboard isn’t attention-grabbing enough for passersby, the model interacts with people in the crowd. Sometimes, she plucks someone out of the crowd, and either tosses them, kisses them (in which case, they turn into a frog), or drops them in her bag. The model also sometimes takes pictures with a Polaroid to display a zoomed-in picture of the audience below.

Billy Jurewicz, founder of space150, explained that the model’s actions are designed to represent “things models do, like flirt, kiss or reject people.” The billboard’s software also picks up on yellow Forever 21 bags, making those carrying the bag more likely targets for attention by the model. According to Jurewicz, the touch was designed as “a nod of thanks for shopping and hopefully an exclusive experience for [shoppers].”

Certainly clever, but where did these ideas come from?

James Squires, space150 Director of Technology, said that the fantastic location inspired the agency to come up with a billboard “that would cause people to stop and actually interact with it, rather than just observe.” He explains that while many of the billboards in Times Square use progressive technology, “the content typically falls flat and does not meet what has now become possible.”

Other public forum pieces, such as artist Chris O’Shea’s Hand from Above and the movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman also served as inspiration for the interactive billboard.

Genius inspiration alone was not enough to create the billboard; there were many technological challenges that made it difficult to implement the idea. Jurewicz pointed out that the billboard required “custom code, technology and perspective implementation.”

Squires explained the challenge of designing something for an outdoors environment -- the billboard has to look good and continue functioning even with changing lighting, snow, rain, and temperature variations. According to Squires, the company “[tested] camera optics on the roof of the Forever 21 building in Times Square and... [filled] up pages and pages of notes with variables [they] had to accommodate.”

The firm faced other challenges aside from the environment and technological requirements -- they couldn’t design the display in its planned location. In order to test and make adjustments to the billboard, the firm constructed a to-scale representation of the underside of the Forever 21 store canopy.

The challenges of creating the billboard were well worth the attention its received. Jurewicz pointed out that “at any given moment, there’s a large crowd in front of the board, standing there for about 10 minutes. Our original ideas were to track people as they were walking, not standing.”

“I think by the second night of the store opening the police actually put up barricades to contain all of the people checking out the sign,” Squires said. “That was pretty amazing.”

For more information on space150 visit www.space150.com