OUTPUT

Viscom Düsseldorf closed its doors last Saturday with the news that visitor numbers were slightly down on last year's (a decrease from 10,900 to 10,700), but up by over 60 percent compared to the 2006 show when it was redeveloped to be 'a 360° trade fair for visual communication'. Given the difficulties faced by so many of our industry's businesses in the past few years this is, overall, quite an achievement. What is more interesting, perhaps, is that the 2011 show broke the record for international visitors, with nearly a quarter of attendees arriving in Düsseldorf from abroad.

This may be an indication of the acceptance of cross-media marketing – highlighted as a trend by the Viscom team – and the way it can cross borders. Interaction between smartphones and digital signage is taking off in a big way, and at the Düsseldorf show visitors could experience screens and displays that are easily combined with games or vouchers sent to the phones of passersby, or invite them to contribute to social media sites. We at Output were also involved in a cross-platform presentation: on our stand we displayed our website on an iPad held in place by an enclosure from fellow London company Bouncepad, essentially turning a magazine into touchscreen digital signage.

A nod to internationalism was also included in the Digital Signage Best Practice Awards, the winners of which were announced during the show. Amongst the nominees in the guiding signage category, for example, was 3d-berlin vr solutions's interactive 3D guiding system for Freie Universität Berlin, through which visitors can search in ten languages for departments, individuals or rooms. Scala's interactive food ordering system for the Holyfields restaurant chain, another nominee, broke the language barrier in a different way by allowing diners to choose and order dishes from an illustrated menu on the touchscreen.

The rise in international delegate numbers demonstrates Viscom's intention of being inclusive; while other trade shows are being designed to appeal to more niche markets, Viscom Düsseldorf covers the gamut of visual communications – as the name suggests – from small-format commercial print to giant interactive billboards. Each country has a different kind of market, and such a broad offering is bound to appeal to the world at large. Indeed, this autumn's German show attracted creatives as well as those involved in manufacturing signage, as Hans-Joachim Erbel, chief executive of Viscom Düsseldorf organiser Reed Exhibitions Deutschland, comments: "The trade fair releases creative fantasies – that is precisely what makes it so interesting not only to the classic visitor target groups but also to a growing number of marketing decision-makers and creative minds from the agency world."

The next German Viscom show will take place in Frankfurt from October 25th to 27th 2012, before returning to Düsseldorf in 2013. Future shows are likely to follow the same lines as this year's, with attracting the entire visual communications community a priority.