Mike Logan celebrates 25 years of innovation and tech

25 Years of Innovation and Tech

Just like we’ve all seen many changes in innovation and technology over the past 25 years, Mike Logan, Display and Input Technology Manager at Anders, has paid specific and specialised focus on the changes occurring within the embedded and display technology industry.

I've seen huge changes, yes! To give you an idea, when I first joined Anders in 1994, there wasn’t a formed market for displays. At that time, we were an analogue meter’s company and we naturally evolved into an embedded and display technology company. Through time, the industry started to realise the benefit of introducing a digital meter, rather than analogue. As the leading company, we were well-placed in the industry to satisfy these requests.

Like with everything else, you have to start somewhere, and during the 2000’s we just watched the market evolve from the basic seven segment type and icon display to alpha numeric displays. Do you remember alpha numeric displays? Two lines of 16 or two lines by 20. You’d find them within vending machines, or maybe a phone. At this point in time, this was considered very high resolution, but, of course, it didn’t stop there. Resolution started to get higher and higher, so you'd gone from 128 to 120 up to QVGA, VGA, SVGA, XGA. Now you can go on and on and on because now we support HD and up to 4K and even 8K in some cases!

It’s been an interesting journey through time and technology within the embedded and touchscreen industry. From the very basic LCD right up to the full colour LCD with touchscreen capacity. The market has never stood still and neither has Anders.

That’s what has kept me in this segment and in Anders. Every year since 1994 there has been a new type of technology. 1994 was the beginning of the LCD revolution and since then it’s been about different channels, varying platforms, and solving our customers’ engineering challenges.

Displays change in size, they change in the technology, the type of panels that have evolved have changed from monochrome to colour. I still remember the first time that I saw a colour display - it was a ‘wow’ moment, I was absolutely amazed. But, like everything else that time touches, when I look at them now in comparison to today’s state-of-the art optical quality they pale in comparison.

I think it's the way the industry has taken hold to embrace LCDs. We have carried out a lot of R&D into improving every aspect of the display, right down to power consumption and energy conservation, to viewing angles, brightness, weight, depth, price, you name it, we are continuously re-engineering and improving it.

We are now in the age of the flexible curved display and there are a lot of product inventors who are designing this into their application. So, watch this space, it’s another 25 years in the making, and there’s always more to come from the market and from Anders.

25 years has gone in the blink of an eye, but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Anders .The company is made up of a great group of people, with the right attitude.They are driven, dedicated, skilled, smart, and interesting, but also fun. We all know that we are in the fortunate position to bring our customers’ ideas to life in a visual way, and we all get a real buzz when the product enters into the market, at which point we all celebrate and say to each other, we did that, that was us. I’ve never wanted to work anywhere else and after 25 years, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Thank you, as the people do genuinely make Anders.