I’ve seen these all over Europe. Some have simple images of the cross flashing, some have windows screensaver esque animations, and some have 3d renders of various things rotating in all sorts of ways. Why is that? Wouldn’t a simple green cross be enough to get the point across, or do they need to be overly verbose? Here’s the video of what I’m talking about, if it didn’t load correctly

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    6·
    4 months ago

    I mean, the lit-up signs are for visibility. In some countries pharmacies are assigned strict working hours by the government, so it’s useful to see at a glance if a pharmacy is currently open without having to walk right up to the door (and night shifts may require ringing a bell in some of them, so that’s also helpful to convey that they are in fact open).

    The fancy animations are just because when signs went from neon-lit to LEDs it turned out not all pharmacists have good design sensibilities. At least as far as I can tell.

    • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      4 months ago

      But I also wonder why there’s so many pharmacies in France. In almost any city I’ve been to it’s hard to not have a green flashing cross in sight.

      French pharmacies cannot open where they want, there is a limit in how many pharmacy a city can have, on the flip coin, it means that they are relatively evenly spread out across the country, and that even in the so called empty diagonal you`ll find a pharmacy.

      Physician do not have this restriction, so many of them go to either Paris or the French riviera, while in rural area in the Northern half, you struggle to find a doctor.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
    5·
    4 months ago

    Loads in Morocco as well, they have loads of pharmacies due to all the French influence.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    3·
    4 months ago

    Maybe some of Europe’s surfeit of demo coders had to make their money somehow, and one of them persuaded a pharmacy that paying them to make them a sign with graphics that spin in eyecatching ways would be a good idea, and the rest was history?

    • object [Object]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      1·
      4 months ago

      That could be what happened, but at a factory. I’ve noticed that a lot of them have similar graphics, so it might be a preset added in by the manufacturer.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      They don’t even need to persuade individual pharmacies. In my country, there is a trade organization of pharmacies that self-regulates the industry and decides, among other things, on the short list of companies whose crosses are allowed to be installed. There are only 6 so getting on that list will give anyone a huge number of orders.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
    2·
    4 months ago

    Must be a continental thing. Here in noggieland we have a simple illuminated green cross.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    4 months ago

    Because they’re easy to recognize and consistent? It’s honestly more weird that other areas of the world haven’t followed suit.

  • FalseMyrmidon@kbin.run
    1·
    4 months ago

    I don’t think we have those in the US at all.

    Anyways it’s probably like that because it’s eye-catching. Eg it’s an ad

  • tmpod@lemmy.ptM
    1·
    4 months ago

    Here in Portugal, most display useful info like date, time, outside temperature (with varying degrees of accuracy), as well as services provided by the pharmacy or some general (often season specific) health recommendation.

    The use of a bright green sign is, of course, to seek attention, but it’s also useful to quickly spot an open place at night, when most are closed and only a few remain opened longer in each town/city neighborhood (called “farmácias de serviço”, i.e something like “pharmacies in service”; they usually rotate between themselves each week). Nowadays you can check which places are available at night through a nice website, but the signs remain a useful thing, nonetheless.

    The animations are just a culture thing now, I’d guess. Different pharmacies employ different animations, some wackier, some less, though there are very common animations for sure, such as the one where a 3D cross is animated rotating on multiple axis at the same time, making a nice spin back to its original position.
    Why? I dunno, they break up the usual info display and help grab attention? I dunno, you get used to it and it mostly gets filtered into the background hehe

    • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 months ago

      In my country, flashing lights for stores are outright banned, because it might trigger epilepsy seizures. Seeing a pharmacy out of all places using it feels very weird.