What are the business opportunities and industry trends in Digital Signage and Retail Media Networks? New Business Opportunity SIG, Meeting March 10, 2005 As reported by Chad Caines ccaines@candassoc.com

Steve Davis, Freelance Graphics Designer Steve Davis has been involved in Graphic Design and Production for nearly 15 years, from his print design and brokering career in the early 1990's, to his current multimedia design and programming roles. As a freelance graphic artist his clients include ad agencies like FCB, EuroRSCG, and McCann Worldwide, and for clients like Peoplesoft, Visa, Wells Fargo, Barclays iShares, Nestle, and Microsoft. His current work appears in a wide variety of applications, from web banners to DVD motion menus, and now to digital signage content. He recognizes the potential of networked digital signage as a powerful new channel for targeted mass media, and now includes "digital signage assets" as a deliverables option to all of his clients.

Click here to download a copy of Steve's presentation slides (PDF 2.5mb) To save this link to disk, right click using Windows and "Save target as..." or control click using Mac and "Save link as...". The highlights of Steve’s presentation I noticed this [digital signage] market about a year ago. For me, it’s like finding the mother lode of gold. I see people in my industry are from a different world than the print world of advertising. They’re sort of from the video world but their caught in the middle. I have done different types of signage, long form and short form. What I’m going to do is give you the information you need to get your work into a digital signage application. I’m going to present this information a little different format. I call it a preparation pipeline. Pipeline is a good term. It begins with an idea. We have the assets from some other media. We have web banners. We have print. We paid for the creative. We paid for the branding. But, we have no idea how to create digital signage. The first thing we need to ask ourselves is what is the venue. There are so many different places that [digital media] can appear. [Ask yourself], how long is the spot? How often does it run? What is the spec? Is there audio involved? My rule of thumb is to assume that audio is not going to work. Assume that you’re in a noisy mall. Your message should move just fine without it.

Let’s look at some of the venues. In a supermarket application, obviously at checkout, you’ve got their [attention]. You’re not going to pull them out of line but you might remind them about their next purchase. Here is another example. There is a company in New York that sends the digital signage assets to cabs. They serve the ad based on the zone of the city. In terms of the designer, someone might ask you to create this video file that is 1024 by 768 [There are two panels], so it’s technically 3,060 pixels wide. You have may have [to create] a big piece of text that laps across the whole thing. There are formats that you have never seen before. I was walking by a high-end retailer of woman’s clothing here in San Francisco and they ran two 50 inch plasma displays vertically. You can imagine that is about 2400 pixels by about 600 wide. If you have ever had to resize a web banner, this is that times ten. It’s challenging.

Developing assets Look for creative assets that already exist. *Royalty free photographs *Paid unlimited rights photographs *Past brand Remember motion Timing and reveal order A [static] print ad is [elements] of a headline or a body or a tag line. The advantage of [dynamic] motion graphics is that you can reveal those elements in a certain order. That is key. Use eye-catching motion When something sparkles, or there is a trail of fire, people connect well. You can introduce lens flares, the halo effect when the sun hits the camera lens. Starting an assignment This is an [easy] assignment from Sprint. The message is "Share it when it happens". 1) Take inventory of your assets and be responsible with your license agreements [In this example] you have a piece of web art. These are approved creatives from the [web] site. Everything is shot well. You don’t have to go out and shoot any [custom] photos. Most likely, [the photo] was shot for Sprint so the rights are unlimited. If you [use] a piece of art from a brochure, make sure the person who designed the brochure bought unlimited media rights. 2) Isolate all of your creative elements in Photoshop. Remove any background and put each in it’s own layer. Photoshop handshakes real well with AfterEffects. 3) This is a good time to get approval from your client. If they don’t like it [so far], then there is no point going to animate your composition on the stage. 4) At this point, our layer Photoshop file is going to be placed in AfterEffects, we are going to define our composition size (in this case it’s 480 x 848), and full motion video at 30 frames per second. Question from audience: At this point can you do the same thing with Flash? Answer: Absolutely. Flash is vector. So no matter how anything moves, your never going to have raster information. Raster information includes motion blur. There is a crisp clear look to Flash, which is just fine. AfterEffects just has more of a video look to it. You must also remember to evaluate the performance of your hardware and your player. Large Flash files can be processor intensive. Be careful of slow running graphically intensive Flash files. 5) Place you creative elements on the stage and animate with the timeline in AfterEffects. Test your animation often to be sure you have achieved the proper timing and reveal order. 6) At this point you can save out as a Quicktime or AVI [file]. MPEG, How does it work? An MPEG takes a look at a series of frames and records only the data associated with the elements that have changed. Recommended Video bitrate and compression tools for digital signage Quicktime Pro – better for high-end MPEG video Discreet Cleaner 6 – better for web content Video standards for digital signage MPEG 1 – Old standard MPEG 2 – Current standard MPEG 4 – not incorporated enough (yet) In the end, you need to use the least amount of MPEG compression as possible. Remember it all starts at the beginning of the pipeline. Where is this [visual media] going to play? You want to know how their player handles your file. If you adjust the bit rate to 8K and it chokes on their player, you may want to pull back and use a 7K bit rate and higher compression. Steve’s Q & A session Question: When is it too much? What happens to clutter and saturation? Answer: As designer’s, we have a responsibility to our clients. Making the message fit the venue [is important]. All you need to do is get their attention. You don’t need to knock them dead.

continue with more of our NBO SIG web edition. Guest Speakers Kevin Massy | Dylan Jones | Steve Davis

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