The World’s Biggest Signpost

Nokia had a navigation service nobody knew about. So we demoed it by building a giant robotic version of one of the oldest navigation tools there is: a signpost.

Nokia had a navigation service, on its phones and online. Hardly anyone knew.

So we took the simplest navigation tool around, the signpost, and made it one of the largest interactive installations in the world: a 50-metre, 60-ton signpost on a crane at Potters Fields, beside Tower Bridge, for three weeks in the autumn of 2009. Text it a place, anywhere on earth, and within moments the arrow swung round to point at it and showed the distance.

It was streamed live to Nokia.com, where every place people sent was pinned to Nokia’s map, and people sent places from the web and from their phones as well as from the street.