5 Places to Look for Trade Show Display Ideas
By Mike Thimmesch, Skyline Exhibits
Where do you look for trade show display ideas for your next display design? How about places where extra effort has been applied to make designs that stand out quickly. Here are 5 places to try for ideas and inspiration:
- Trade Shows — Gee, what a novel idea, look for trade show display ideas at a trade show! You'll be there anyhow, right? At minimum you'll look very closely at your competitors' trade show booths to see how they differ or match your own marketing messages. Now, take that heightened scrutiny and apply it to non-competitors as well. If you can, walk the show before it opens, guessing which designs will pull in the most people. Then come back during show hours to see if you were right – and see which booths actually do pull in the crowds. Then try to discern why they were so successful. Even better: walk a show outside your industry, so you can see how completely different exhibitors design their displays.
- Billboards — Billboards are best when designed to quickly communicate a single message, with big, bold images, and not much text. Walking by 10-foot trade show displays at 3 miles per hour is similar to driving by a billboard at 60 miles per hour, because you only have a few seconds to get the message. If your boss wants to overload your trade show display design, take them for a drive, and ask them to count the words on the billboards that get their attention. If you're lucky, they'll get an "aha!" moment, and you'll have a new ally in making a more simple and effective display design. And you can ask your boss to pay for lunch.
- A Mall — While billboards can inspire exhibit ideas, retail stores provide inspiration for island trade show exhibits. Walk a mall and see how individual stores within the mall have designed the signage to get you in. Once inside ask yourself, how have they designed their space to handle traffic flow? Identifying departments (just as you would identify divisions)? Product merchandising? Even look at color choices, suface materials, and how their staffers engage and talk with you. Treat yourself to some new shoes while you're there.
- Magazines — Although magazines are made for reading at a more leisurely pace, ads within magazines are made to get your attention fast. Look for ads that have engaging, simple designs. What imagery did they use? How did they handle the headline? Is most of the text big? And look beyond the ads, to the page layouts of the articles themselves. Designers often create a more billboard-like first-page spread for longer articles, especially for the cover story. Check out the typography, the color combinations, photos and illustrations, and textured backgrounds. Once you start looking at magazines this way, you may forget to actually read them!
- Online — With just a few clicks you can search for trade show exhibits and harness a bounty of images online. It's a quick way to look at lots of exhibits without leaving your desk. To help your online search, we've photographed thousands of our client's trade show exhibits, and put 450 of our best in our trade show display photo library, searchable by size and vertical market. We've also put over 1,200 high-end renderings in our trade show exhibit design portfolio. Just remember that online images tend to be small, two-dimensional, and lower resolution, while real exhibits are larger and meant to be experienced at a human scale. Online is a good place to get ideas, but there ain't nothing like the real thing.
About the Author: Mike Thimmesch is Skyline Exhibits' Director of Lead Generation and Industry Relations, with over 20 years of Marketing and Trade Show Marketing experience.
December 2009 Exhibitor Newsletter:
