News

Everywhere a sign

March 31, 2002

SEATTLE - A kiosk all alone in a corner is like the kid no one notices at the school dance.

Several companies want to help make kiosks more noticeable, and attractive, to consumers. Their solution: something familiar and relatively low-tech, compared to the gizmos inside kiosks: signage.

AccessVia Inc., a Seattle-based company, recently took its program that creates retail store signage and put it on the Internet, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.

Company founder Dean Sleeper designed dSign to create better looking in-store signage. dSign is used by more than 300 major retail chains, including Fred Meyer, Walgreens and Bed Bath & Beyond, the Journal reported.

The Web version of dSign, called Web dSignShop, uses a browser plug-in to make it easy for retailers to print signs on their own printers. Using the program, stores can deliver the same product and price information to retailers' in-store kiosks, e-mail promotions and Web sites, as well as customers' portable devices.

The system's advantage is that it works directly with information that is already in retailers' databases.

At April's KioskCom 2001 conference, companies exhibited innovative ways for kiosks to attract attention with signs.Fiberoptic Lighting Inc., of Portland, Ore., displayed a line of bright fiber optic signs that attract attention to kiosks with motion and changing colors.

SmarteTouch, based in Bessemer, Ala., believes kiosks will generate more revenue and make advertisers more willing to buy space by using a type of sign advertising agencies already understand: lenticular displays. In these displays, two or more images are placed on a single sheet, offset by a series of stripes. The sign's cover, a plastic sheet, masks all but one image at a time. The changing images give the appearance of motion.

SmarteTouch is a member of the Global Access Alliance, a consortium of six kiosk-related companies: Advanced Technology and Media Network, Digital Matter Corp., SmarteTouch, SPA Marketing, TAP Computers and TouchPoint Technologies.