Exhibitions are intended to be immersive experiences, brimming with visual stimulation to inspire and engage audiences. So when planning to exhibit at an exhibition or trade show, the stand design itself must be subject to careful consideration.
After all, exhibition venues are vast open spaces with many other businesses all competing for attention. How your stand is presented through the construction, colour use, imagery and typography all have a casting decision on whether your stand grabs attention and reaches your business objectives or not.
Human Built offers a complete range of services when it comes to exhibitions, including the designing, transportation and installation of exhibition stands. While each of our projects will receive a tailor made approach, here are some of the typical steps involved in designing an exhibition stand to shed light on the process.
Establish Clear Goals
This first one’s over to you, as every exhibitor must have precise objectives they want to achieve as a result of attending an exhibition or a trade show.
From there, every decision made in terms of the design will factor in these goals so that your attendance will maximise your ROI.
Some common examples of exhibition goals include:
- Expanding your current customer base
- The launch of a new product or service that needs exposure
- A particular message customers should leave with
- Changing perceptions about your business, products or industry
- The ability for visitors to carry out certain activities while at the stand
- Capturing leads to follow up on after the event
While the goals will be about your business, how they need to be translated is by factoring in the audience, as it’s your visitors who ultimately will be interacting with your stand.
As an example, a retail unit will have a goal of selling products while at the exhibition. How this could be achieved is by using a Magnwall to illuminate products from afar, or to use colourful signage that catches attention. The design would factor in not only the business branding but the target audience of the products.
Regardless of your objectives, any design elements will also consider the psychology behind what you are looking to achieve. As an example, blue is typically considered a safe and trustworthy colour, which is why it’s used for branding banks or news outlets, green can be associated with wellness etc. The imagery itself will also consider the visual communication in relation to your target demographic and overall messaging.
Decide On Your Exhibition Stand Type
Before a single pixel of your exhibition stand can be designed, a stand configuration selection will need to be made. That’s because a template will be created using specialist design software that will eventually be sent to print.
The goals you’ve decided on from above will ultimately dictate the type of stand you opt for, as the stand type must allow your business to reach its objectives.
Types Of Exhibition Stands
Some of the exhibition stands we provide here at Human Built include:
- Custom exhibition stands
- Emex theatre
- Magnwall
- Modular stands
- Seminar theatre
- Shell Scheme
- Space only stands
Not sure what exhibition stand will suit your business or exhibition objectives? Download our modular stands brochure to get a flavour of what we can create for you.
We also provide a range of exhibitor graphics such as plinths, brochure stands, cubes, banners and much more. All of which will also require specific templates to be created so that they print perfectly – but we’ll take care of all that! Just let us know what you need and we’ll get it done.
Create The Master Template For The Design
Once we have your exhibition stand design type and any accompanying graphics such as plinths or banners that need creating, we’ll set to work on the template design. This part of the process is very mathematical since exhibition plots have specific dimensions that must be adhered to.
Also, if your stand features any lighting, audiovisual, electrical elements etc, then these will also need to be factored into the template. For example, you wouldn’t want your logo obscured by cabling, or a lighting rig to be placed in front of a piece of text making it impossible to read, so all such details (if applicable to your stand type) will be ironed out at this point of the process.
Choose The Graphics
The type of stand you opt for is going to dictate how much available space there is for graphics, along with which graphical elements will be most suited to the dimensions and overall goals of your exhibition.
Graphic elements include the likes of photography, illustrations, logos and typography. In some cases, clients will supply the graphics and in others, we can supply them too.
Regardless of what the design is going to look like, one element that must remain consistent is the need for high quality throughout. Exhibition graphics are printed at an incredibly large scale, and every single millimetre needs to look sharp. We achieve this by using high resolution images and file formats that will offer superior quality.
It’s a common misconception but no, we cannot ‘get your logo off Google and stretch it’ – perish the thought! Likewise, images ‘designed’ in Microsoft Word won’t do either. The reason is because every time an image is stretched it loses quality, which will show up as pixelation when printing at scale. Likewise, if an image hasn’t been designed using industry standard software, it won’t look good enough when printed at scale either.
If you plan on sending over graphics such as your logo or any product images, we’ll advise you of what’s needed before we get started, so that the result that comes out of the printer is spectacular without an inch of pixelation in sight. We’ll also be careful to avoid any copyright issues too, along with any other niggles that may need ironing out.
Spoiler alert: Images must have a minimum of 300dpi resolution. Acceptable file formats to be used in your stand include PDF, AI, EPS and large scale JPEGS or PNGS.
Colour Options
We can design your exhibition stand in all colours of the rainbow. However, most of the time an exhibition stand is designed using a company’s brand guidelines. As well as stating how your logo can be used and what typography is associated with your brand, brand guidelines will also tell us the exact colour code used to make your company colours. If these don’t exist, we can use a colour dropper tool on our design software to grab the hex code, though branding guidelines are always preferred to ensure consistency.
All graphics intended for print must be in CMYK rather than RGB (screen colours), as printers require information to mix ink colours precisely. For example, the Asda logo (#78BE20) is a different green to the Starbucks logo (#00624), hence saying a logo is ‘green’ is only half the battle!
If not using your specific brand colours either for part of the exhibition stand or all of it, then we’ll choose the most appropriate colours based on your exhibitor objectives.
Mocking Up The Design
Once all of the elements have been added to the template, this is a great opportunity to reflect on the design and whether it can be improved on. We’ll refer back to your business goals on this one, as well as casting our designer’s eye over the layout, colour use and overall appearance of the stand.
We’re experienced in all aspects of the exhibition process having built exhibitions for over 200 different venues in an incredible 71 countries. So what that means for you is that we’ll use this real life experience to ensure that before your exhibition stand goes to print, no stone has been left unturned in the design stakes. We know what stands out in a vast exhibition venue and what doesn’t, so we’ll be keeping your stand firmly in the eye catching territory.
Of course, the mockup stage is also an opportunity for you the client to tell us your thoughts too. We’ll work together until every last pixel is perfected.
Exhibition Stand Printing
Here comes the fun part, which is when we see your exhibition stand which we’ve designed for you emerging from our industrial printers!
As well as using large format printers, exhibition stands themselves are printed onto specialist materials depending on the component we are printing.
Once again, we’ll be casting a keen eye over the details to ensure everything is printing as intended, both from a design point of view as well as the printing process itself. Technical elements we’ll be looking out for include checking the bleed of the print, the colour accuracy, and ensuring there are no general imperfections so that when your stand is built, it’s picture perfect.
Consider Furniture Choices
Furniture, carpets and any audiovisual equipment form the finishing touches of your exhibition stand design. Often, any furniture or accessories will be factored into the design as a whole, so that everything complements each other.
We provide furniture and equipment hire as part of our comprehensive range of services for exhibitors, which thankfully means no running to DFS the day before the show for you.
Exhibition Stand Construction
Some exhibition stands and supporting graphics are designed for the user to assemble. In which case, we’ll provide you with the help and instructions you need to do just that.
Most of the time though, we also take care of the construction of an exhibition stand that we’ve designed. This includes the logistics where we’ll transport the stand pieces from our location to the venue itself, wherever it happens to be located in Europe!
From there, our team of builders, engineers and electricians will construct your stand, connect it to the power supply and ensure each detail is working as intended. Any furniture will also be placed in position, along with any carpets you’ve ordered.
We’ll then hand the mic back to you, as your exquisitely designed exhibition stand is ready for action!
Exhibition Stand Design Ideas
Every exhibition stand we create will benefit from a combined pool of talent to come up with the most innovative solution. We’ll also be referring back to your objectives as an exhibitor, along with your stand type and project budget when coming up with ideas.
That said, here are just some of the elements that you may wish to incorporate into your stand design. If you have any custom ideas, we’d be keen to hear them too! Ultimately, we want to present your business in the most intriguing way possible for visitors.
Guerilla Marketing
Imagine a pedestrian crossing where the lines are painted as yellow McDonald’s fries (that was a real advert, by the way!), which in essence sums in guerilla marketing. Essentially, we’ll find ideas to market your business but in the most creative of ways, so that it makes people stop and notice.
There are ways to incorporate guerilla marketing into an exhibition stand, as well as the wider venue itself. Also, such creative strategies make for excellent social media content too.
Interactive Elements
For businesses that sell physical products, consider whether there is a way we can display what you do within an interactive sense. As well as using audiovisual equipment, gamification or 3D models will help interpret your cause in a kinesthetic sense.
So instead of just explaining how great you are, interactive elements will actually show it. Plus, anything that encourages visitors to come and engage with your stand is more likely to lead to a conversion versus simply handing out a leaflet.
Large Scale Graphics
Executing a well thought out exhibition stand design isn’t always about cramming everything onto a document and printing it. Instead, the less is more approach can certainly work to your advantage, especially if using stunning graphics that turn heads from all angles.
Lighting
Exhibition venues tend to lack natural light, which is why exhibitors must consider their lighting solutions as part of their stand design. The lighting is also going to affect how impactful your stand is, and even how inviting it looks. We can provide the lighting for your exhibition stand and even install it for you too so that your stand is beautifully illuminated at all times.
Magnwall Displays
Magnwall is an innovative way of displaying retail products at exhibitions, especially the likes of clothes, jewellery and even furniture. Magnwall displays are fully customisable, which means you can reach your sales objectives with ease, and even switch things up during the day. Best of all, Magnwall displays capture attention!
Pops Of Colour
Exhibitions are a chance to run wild with colour, especially if your business branding is vibrant as it is. Ultimately, you don’t want your stand to fade into the background, and colour is certainly one way to keep all eyes on your stand.
Virtual Reality
When designing an exhibition stand, it’s important to embrace technology especially if it’s relevant to your products or services. Virtual reality can be used for everything from interior design mockups to racing car simulations. Similar to some of the above ideas we’ve mentioned, any virtual reality setup will draw a crowd and encourage a longer linger time on your stand, which is exactly what you want to see where drumming up interest is concerned.
Exhibition Stand Design Top Tips
- Be sure to leave enough time to have your exhibition stand designed. As a general rule, 6+ months is required for custom exhibition stands, and 3+ months for made ready exhibition stands.
- Approach us with clear objectives about what your business needs to achieve, so we can hit the ground running with our design and marketing responses.
- Let us know your target demographics, so we can adjust our design response accordingly.
- While looking at past exhibitions is helpful, ideally, we want to create something innovative that the public hasn’t seen before, so definitely have an open mind rather than wanting to directly copy a previous idea.
- If your business possesses any striking imagery that could be used for your stand design or exhibition marketing materials, let us know!
- Avoid any rebrands in between ordering an exhibition stand and the exhibition or trade show itself, so that your stand and marketing materials will look cohesive.
- If you want us to incorporate any links, social media channels or captcha codes into the design, make sure these are all live and working so that you won’t miss any potential leads.
- If in doubt about any aspects of the design process, reach out to us! Our designers want the very best outcome for your exhibition stand, so let’s work together to make it happen.
Exhibition Stand Design UK
Are you ready to have a winning stand built for your exhibition or event? Human Built is an exhibition agency offering a full range of services including exhibition stand design.
We’re based in Birmingham, with locations in Glasgow, Chippenham, Skelmersdale, Brentford and Taunton. We offer our exhibition stand design and build services across the UK and Europe.
So wherever you’re exhibiting and whatever you have in mind, let us show you what we can do.
Email us or give us a call on 07760 172326 for further information, and our friendly team will be in touch. You can also check us out on Facebook or Instagram where you can also view our work on display.
