So, you’ve booked your next exhibition, reserved your space, and now you need to organise a stand. But how can you now tackle exhibition stand design and what will you feature in your display?
Your exhibition stand contractor should supply you with some free design mock-ups based on your company branding. Some key things to remember when designing an exhibition stand are:
- Text – should be minimal and include only a few key benefits of your products. Too much text will make the stand look too busy, and no one will read it. Your company name should be large enough to be visible from across the hall and should be placed at the top of the stand or on a hanging banner – this is high-level branding. Place descriptive text lower down the stand so visitors can read it up close if they want to.
- Font – keep it simple, good fonts to use are serif or sans serif, and decorative fonts are difficult to read from a distance. For consistency keep the fonts the same, or have no more than two, across the stand.
- Eye-level branding – this is where you put your imagery and keep images large to draw attention to your stand.
- White space – allow plenty of space in between text and images to prevent the stand from looking too cluttered and fussy.
- Colour – keep it simple, one or two colours based on your branding. Ensure there is a sharp contrast between the text colour and the background.
- Lighting – don’t rely on the exhibition lighting, clever use of LED lights and coloured spotlights can enhance your stand design and draw attention to specific areas of the stand.
The Design Process
This will vary from company to company, but here at Quadrant2Design we take the following approach to stand design:
1. Free Design Mock-ups
It all starts with a client brief. Once we receive a brief, our in-house CAD designers look at the requirements. They need to be sure what the message is, what the products or services are and what features are required in the stand. They then produce free mock-ups to give the customer some ideas of what their stand could look like. There is no obligation or charge at this stage. The exhibition stand design will be imaginative and unique, based on your branding and imagery.
2. Stand Design Approval
We discuss the designs, layouts and plans with you and if you would like to proceed, we establish what would work best and make any amendments which are required. Once you are happy with it, the design is approved.
3. Project Management
Once the design is approved it gets passed to the project manager. They look after the whole stand-building process using software called FileMaker Pro where they document the progress of the project with key details for the event and log any notes to do with your project. For example, they make sure they have CAD approval, artwork and graphic design approval and finishing approval. They also deal with any amendments and changes you might want to make during the process.
4. Stand Manufacture
Once everything is approved, the team can start the stand manufacture. This all happens in-house, no part of it is outsourced. That way you can be sure of the quality and there will be no hidden costs.
5. Graphics Printing
After the frame of the stand is built, we print the graphic panels that will fix it. We have our large-format graphic printers.
6. Pre-Build Inspection
Before handing it over to you we pre-build your stand in our warehouse. This is a 100% build down to every last detail, so you can see exactly what it will look like, there won’t be any bits missing. This allows us to check for any issues and for you to inspect them. If there are any problems they can all be resolved in-house before the event. If you are planning to self-build your stand, at this stage you can come to our warehouse and we can show you how to do it. Alternatively, if you are not local, we can send a video of our fitting team building the stand which you can follow.
7. Install and Dismantle
If you choose our fitting team can transport your stand to the show and install it. They then return at the end of the show to dismantle it.
If you wish to reconfigure or change your stand for a different show we offer a lifetime free stand design. We’re happy to amend the design at no extra charge. This will give you a fresh look for another show, allowing you to cost-efficiently re-use your stand many times.
Some items you might wish to add to your stand for display include:
- Product display units
- Furniture
- Flower arrangements
- Brochure racks
Whilst it is important to make your stand look as appealing as possible, don’t overcrowd it, you need space for visitors to move freely without tripping over lots of furniture.
Designing an exhibition stand is an important process, you want your investment to pay off and for your stand to attract lots of attention and stand out. This is why we have a set process that we follow to ensure nothing goes wrong and everyone is happy with the result. For help designing your next exhibition stand call us on 01202 723 500 or email design@quadrant2design.com.
