Gate Information Appears Through Wood Totems Airside At Spokane’s Expanded Airport

August 1, 2024 by Dave Haynes

I was just saying the other day, again, that if people want to see innovation and how digital signage can be applied across big footprint venues, they should go to a new or renovated airport terminal.

Here’s a good example of that: custom display totems at the departure gates of Spokane International Airport in eastern Washington state. These are totems that use high brightness, fine pitch 1.5mm LED modules in behind a super-thin real wood veneer at the top of the totems, on two sides, with the destination and flight information appearing through the veneer. The airport was going for a woodsy northwest feel.

The LED is from Atlanta’s Nanolumens, Dimensional Innovations of Kansas City was the integrator, and the content design and CMS software comes from Orlando-based Synect, which now specializes in the more meat and potatoes aspects of airport messaging and guidance (leaving the Wow Factor big creative work to the likes of Montreal’s Moment Factory and Gentilhomme).

The pylons are in the new Concourse C West Terminal Expansion area, and are part of larger work by Synect that included:

• Visual communication infrastructure at three new gates;
• A new 15-display check-in video wall;
• A new curbside LED display;
• A new 1×5 advertising video wall;
• Two single displays at each gate with dynamic flight information, airline branding, and airport branding;
• Two 4×1 flight information displays with dynamic flight information and airport branding, including localized video content.

The LED through veneer is not a new idea, but a very nice take on it. I saw a Dutch company at ISE, years ago, showing LED through veneer.

And this is not the Unilumin-backed start-up Cecoceco, which is doing this sort of thing on full walls, using 3D printed tile covers over LED arrays to make visuals appear on walls that can look like wood or granite or whatever is conjured up by architects.