As a trade show display designer, and now as a trade show marketing consultant, I have been an advocate of having an initial meeting with a client to learn their specific marketing objectives, understand their unique place in their market, and establish the budget, time line and other factors that affect a new trade show display, before the design process is started.
But there is another approach: giving exhibitors the resources to develop trade show display ideas along with their agency. One of the most popular and effective resources is a gallery of work that the exhibit design agency has done for other clients that the new exhibitor can browse through in order stimulate creativity. Not only can a trade show display portfolio provide ideas to discuss, it can also help instill trust in the exhibitor that the exhibit house has the experience to pull off the project.
Another way to generate trade show display ideas and establish the overall direction of the design is for an exhibitor to flip through a set of images that represent different – often contrasting – design styles, and identify the look and feel that is most congruent with their brand, their corporate aesthetic, and their message. This type of process can ensure that both the exhibitor and their exhibit design firm understand what subjective words, such as “high-tech” or “established,” look like when translated into a trade show display design.
An additional resource is the case study, which can help fill in the functional or engineering details behind the visual impact of the trade show display. An explanation of why or how a designer’s ideas met an exhibitor’s marketing goals or solved a shipping logistics problem can trigger new ideas and ways of thinking about the trade show display design process.
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