Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh apertures with ink, and a reverse stroke then causes the screen to touch the substrate momentarily along a line of contact. This causes the ink to wet the substrate and be pulled out of the mesh apertures as the screen springs back after the blade has passed. One colour is printed at a time, so several screens can be used to produce a multi-coloured image or design.
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect. "Halftone" can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process.
A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an electronic device.
A window blind is a type of window covering. There are many different kinds of window blinds which use a variety of control systems. A typical window blind is made up of several long horizontal or vertical slats of various types of hard material, including wood, plastic or metal which are held together by cords that run through the blind slats. Vertical blinds run along a track system which can tilt open and closed and move side-to-side. Window blinds can be manoeuvred with either a manual or remote control by rotating them from an open position, with slats spaced out, to a closed position where slats overlap and block out most of the light. There are also several types of window coverings, called shades, that use a single piece of soft material instead of slats.
A shoji is a door, window or room divider used in traditional Japanese architecture, consisting of translucent sheets on a lattice frame. Where light transmission is not needed, the similar but opaque fusuma is used. Shoji usually slide, but may occasionally be hung or hinged, especially in more rustic styles.
In bus advertising, buses and their related infrastructure is a medium commonly used by advertisers to reach the public with their message. Usually, this takes the form of promoting commercial brands, but can also be used for public campaign messages. Buses may also be used as part of a political or promotional campaign, or as a tool in a commercial enterprise.
Smart glass, also known as switchable glass, dynamic glass, and smart-tinting glass, is a type of glass that can change its reflective properties to prevent sunlight and heat from entering a building and to also provide privacy. Smart glass for building aims to provide more energy-efficient buildings by reducing the amount of solar heat that passes through glass windows.
A 3D display is a display device capable of conveying depth to the viewer. Many 3D displays are stereoscopic displays, which produce a basic 3D effect by means of stereopsis, but can cause eye strain and visual fatigue. Newer 3D displays such as holographic and light field displays produce a more realistic 3D effect by combining stereopsis and accurate focal length for the displayed content. Newer 3D displays in this manner cause less visual fatigue than classical stereoscopic displays.
A backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). As LCDs do not produce light by themselves—unlike, for example, cathode ray tube (CRT), plasma (PDP) or OLED displays—they need illumination to produce a visible image. Backlights illuminate the LCD from the side or back of the display panel, unlike frontlights, which are placed in front of the LCD. Backlights are used in small displays to increase readability in low light conditions such as in wristwatches, and are used in smart phones, computer displays and LCD televisions to produce light in a manner similar to a CRT display. A review of some early backlighting schemes for LCDs is given in a report Engineering and Technology History by Peter J. Wild.
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, most, though not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, and some are still in use.
A window film, sometimes called tint, is a thin laminate film that can be installed on the interior or exterior of glass surfaces in automobiles and boats, and as well as on the interior or exterior of glass in homes and buildings. It is usually made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family, due to its clarity, tensile strength, dimensional stability, and ability to accept a variety of surface-applied or embedded treatments.
Wrap advertising or a vehicle wrap is known as the marketing practice of completely or partially covering (wrapping) a vehicle in a vinyl material, which may be for a color change, advertising or custom delivery. The result of this process is essentially a mobile billboard. Wrap advertising can be achieved by painting a vehicle's outer surface, but an increasingly ubiquitous practice in the 21st century involves the use of large vinyl sheets as "decals". The vinyl sheets can later be removed with relative ease, drastically reducing the costs associated with changing advertisements. While vehicles with large, flat surfaces are often used, automobiles can also serve as hosts for wrap advertising, despite consisting of more curved surfaces. Wrap advertising is also used in the magazine and publishing industries.
In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.
Tempered or toughened glass is a type of safety glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tension. Such stresses cause the glass, when broken, to shatter into small granular chunks instead of splintering into jagged shards as ordinary annealed glass does. The granular chunks are less likely to cause injury.
In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN, MIT, University of Toronto, Carnegie Mellon University and Bell Labs in the 1970s. CERN started using multi-touch screens as early as 1976 for the controls of the Super Proton Synchrotron. Capacitive multi-touch displays were popularized by Apple's iPhone in 2007. Plural-point awareness may be used to implement additional functionality, such as pinch to zoom or to activate certain subroutines attached to predefined gestures.
A one-way mirror, also called two-way mirror, is a reciprocal mirror that appears reflective on one side and transparent at the other. The perception of one-way transmission is achieved when one side of the mirror is brightly lit and the other side is dark. This allows viewing from the darkened side but not vice versa.
Large-screen television technology developed rapidly in the late 1990s and 2000s. Prior to the development of thin-screen technologies, rear-projection television was standard for larger displays, and jumbotron, a non-projection video display technology, was used at stadiums and concerts. Various thin-screen technologies are being developed, but only liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PDP) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) have been publicly released. Recent technologies like organic light-emitting diode (OLED) as well as not-yet-released technologies like surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) or field emission display (FED) are in development to replace earlier flat-screen technologies in picture quality.
Time multiplexed optical shutter (TMOS) is a flat panel display technology developed, patented and commercialized by Uni-Pixel Displays, Inc. TMOS is based on the principles of total internal reflection (TIR), frustration of TIR (FTIR) and field sequential colour generation (FSC). This combination of features make it suitable for applications such as mobile phones, televisions and signalling systems.
Digital ceramic printing on glass is a technological development used for the application of imagery, pattern or text to the surface of flat glass. Like other printing on glass methods, it uses a form of printmaking. Digital ceramic printing on glass has allowed for new possibilities and improvements in flat glass decoration and treatment such as high levels of customization, translucency and opacity control, light diffusion and transmission, ability to calculate solar heat gain co-efficiency, electrical conductivity, slip resistance, and reduced incidences of bird collision.
Contra Vision Ltd was founded in 1985. There are two wholly owned subsidiaries: Contra Vision North America, Inc., which operates out of Atlanta, USA, covering the North American market and surrounding countries; and Contra Vision Supplies Ltd, which operates across the other continents of the world from a base in Stockport, UK.
