Activated Graphic Fair Murals

[Andy Lashier] Our company has done murals on buildings for several years now. But we came up with the idea that it would be great to look at what's the next generation of printed graphics and signage? And augmented reality and hybrid reality are just something that seemed really intriguing. Unfortunately, we didn't have those resources at our company to be able to do something like that. But the fair put us together with a company that did. And so we worked with Zirous, a West Des Moines company, to take our digital created file and create something that comes to life once you activate it. So we're calling this an activated graphic. All it takes is capturing a QR code. Doesn't capture any data from your phone or any information, doesn't require download of an app. It's basically allowing your phone's camera to hit a website, then it will activate the graphic, and the graphic will come to life.

[Man] There we go, yep. Oh, that's cool.

[Luke McDermott] A giant mural, obviously people love taking pictures in front of it. We thought, what a better way to introduce more people to augmented reality than to have an augmented reality activated picture? On our side, what we do is go through a design process where we brainstorm, we get just a bunch of ideas out there to think of, what visuals might we want to bring to it? What are we working with? Then we've got a large - I think it was a quarter-scale proof from Lashier to really start testing our designs on. But what to animate really came from the digital design itself. We have a lot of Iowa traditional factors. We said, bring those out, make those front and center. Really bring those to life so that people can feel like it's part of their culture.

[Mary Funk] It was great. It was like a 3D thing. It had additional language, like Best Days Ever that popped out, looked like sparklers. Some of the foreground crops came out at you as well.

[Henry Funk] To me it reminded me of one of those snapshot filters.

[State Fair Queens] Thank you.

[Woman 3] That's so cool.

[Woman 4] Okay, I've got one live and one non-live.

[Woman 5] That is so cool.

[Woman 6] Yeah, isn't that cute?

[Andy] One of the toughest things in our business is freshness. That when we put up a vinyl or a material on a wall, it's usually staying for a while. Because people have made an investment in that. But after a while, people start -- it starts blending into the surroundings. People don't notice it as much. What activation allows us to do is actually change the image that happens in the background. So while in real life the image doesn't change, what it does when you hold your phone up to it and eventually your glasses, it can change daily, it can change hourly. It keeps the signs and the graphics fresh so that the message will always be new to the people that see it. And in the future will be individualized to them. So rather than seeing a message for many eyes, you could see a message just dedicated to you.