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 full video instead of a gif

  • MudMan@fedia.io
    57·
    6 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.

    • Damage@feddit.it
      12·
      6 months ago

      This. The big green cross had the purpose of helping people locate open pharmacies, so they already were a sort of advertisement, in a tangential way… when technology allowed for flasher ones, most businesses went for it, because why not.

  • Thurstylark@lemm.eeEnglish
    405·
    6 months ago

    Ok, so this might be an americanism, but the green cross says “cannabis dispensary” to me. At least around me, the medical marijuana industry is somewhat separated from the medical industry, and dispensaries are entirely different establishments from pharmacies. Pharmacies (and other medical establishments) use different symbols. If they were to use a cross to indicate a medical establishment, the red cross would be recognizable as a generalized symbol, but apparently it’s heavily protected by the Red Cross.

    But that’s just my context, so I don’t have much of an answer beyond “this is what it means 'round these parts”

    Edit: added info from below

    • tacosplease@lemmy.world
      292·
      6 months ago

      To add to this, the US already has a universal symbol for pharmacies. It’s a capital R with the slanted leg extended past the bottom of the R and crossed to make a X.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      211·
      6 months ago

      The red cross symbol is actually not a generalized symbol and use of it is heavily controlled by the American Red Cross non-profit. There is a history of lawsuits against video games for using the red cross on medkits without permission. If a pharmacy in the US uses it, they no doubt had to seek approval.

      • Thurstylark@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        6 months ago

        That’s definitely part of my blind spot here. I don’t know of anywhere that uses a green cross for something other than a dispensary, but I also don’t know a lot of things , sooo¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        • VonReposti@feddit.dk
          14·
          6 months ago

          The green cross is the universal symbol for pharmacies in Southern Europe. Admittedly I haven’t checked if any of them do have cannabis, but I’d recommend not asking pharmacists whether they got it. As others mentioned, the red cross wouldn’t be used as that would be a Geneva conventions violation.

          • black0ut@pawb.social
            5·
            6 months ago

            Indeed, the green cross is the symbol for pharmacies here in Spain and in most places I’ve been (including a bit of northern europe).

            None of them sell cannabis. If legal to sell, it needs to be sold in separate stores, which usually don’t have flashing signs. Those stores can’t use the green cross as a symbol.

      • slickgoat@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 months ago

        It is universal in France. Sometimes you can stand in the street and see four or five flashing away in your view. I kinda like them, don’t have them in my country.

  • tmpod@lemmy.ptM
    361·
    6 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

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      6 months ago

      Here in Portugal, most display useful info like date, time, outside temperature (with varying degrees of accuracy),

      We have ones like this in the states too. My favorite near me is at a church. It cycles between temp and date, but the display has too few characters, so instead of just being two screens, date then temp, it’s 3 - day and month, a second screen that just says “/24” and then the temp.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          6 months ago

          They’re more seen at older businesses that have been there forever. Newer ones get newer signs, with more flashy displays.

    • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
      2·
      6 months ago

      I’ve seen a colour one like the one I posted below here in Portugal. It really is not an institutionalised thing, it’s just what the owner decides how wacky their place is gonna be.

  • franglais@lemm.ee
    23·
    6 months ago

    There are some that flash super bright, and super fast, in winter, when driving home in the dark, it feels like I’m on the verge of an epileptic fit, must be a nightmare for those who have to live with that shining in through their windows.

    • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
      18·
      6 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.

  • CannedTuna@sh.itjust.works
    18·
    6 months ago

    Yo! I’ve been wondering the same thing! I saw those all over Greece and they’re wild. Thought they were like cannabis shops or something lol.

  • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    6 months ago

    I’ve seen them in southern Europe on vacation, but never in the Nordics. Allways thought it was a Iberian/Latin thing (FR, ES, IT, PT). Guess they are more common than I thought.

    • tmpod@lemmy.ptM
      6·
      6 months ago

      Can confirm that in Portugal, pretty much every single pharmacy has one of these, with varying degrees of wacky 2D/3D animations and info display.

    • wootz@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 months ago

      They’re slowing creeping in here in Denmark.

      There is one around the corner from where I live. It doesn’t display anything but time and temperature (yet), but every time I walk past I secretly hope they’ve fired up the rave machine.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    12·
    6 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?