what about those big cardboard cut outs with stickers on for the seats--point out what you want from whats left and the check in folk then stuck it on your boarding pass.
They looked very pretty at the start of checkin but after a few pax requested seat changes they became a real mess. Stickers had to be peeled off boarding passes and stapled back on to the seat chart. Your average stapler did not have enough reach to place the sticker in its original location so returned stickers were usually reattached in the margins of the chart. With one seat chart serving several checkin counters it became a centralised feeding frenzy. The largest sticker seat chart I saw was for a DC-10. Printed in full colour it must have cost a fortune to produce.