Design guidelines that will help you steal the show

 
Many businesses fail to undertake the steps required to analyse the purpose of their stand design prior to working on it. The thought process that most businesses have is usually:

“Let’s pick a shape and scale our company graphics to suit it.”

Added to that is usually…

“And we’ll need a nice table for products demos. What more do we need?”

This sort of thinking is born out of a need to utilize available resources with efficiency. The 80/20 rule; Focus on the 20% that gives 80% of the returns. But ignorance ends up flipping this rule for businesses because they are not aware of efficient methods.

The process to determine your exhibition stand design and build has is both a creative and engineering challenge. However, the benefits of having a design that is aesthetically attractive to visitors while remaining functional and in one piece are numerous. More than getting the business leads, an impactful stand design gives your business an unprecedented level of exposure within your industry.

But for that to happen, you need to change your mind set and consider exhibition stands as a marketing medium not a marketing tool. The distinction lies in the fact that as medium your brand message will need to follow a set of guidelines that are inherit to the medium, these guidelines are the strengths of the medium that will help you branding make a massive impact.

So how do you do that? Here are some methods to get you started:

Be open to brand adaption

The best exhibition stand ideas take one aspect of their brand or product and turn that into a single message which can be conveyed to visitors instantly. Since they understand that visitors have short attention spans due the amount of exhibitions visitors are exposed to.

Don’t try to plaster your usual brand messages on your stand, instead find a way to convert your brand or product into a single idea that can be presented across your entire exhibition stand. You can eventually fill in the visitor about your brand or product after they’ve entered the exhibition stand. But until then it’s crucial that your stand design quickly imprints itself in the mind of your visitors so that interest for your brand and its services takes root. You’re marketing team can consult an exhibition designer to get a better idea.

Keep Messages Brief but Relatable

Visitors do filter out exhibition stands as the day wears on. Stands with business-speak and indecipherable buzzwords get knocked down first. And after that, plain headlines and pointless jingles are ignored. What doesn’t manage to get filtered out, are lines that paint a moment, an ideal, or convey a need. Not only are these lines understood subconsciously, they also get to the point. So spent your time creating a relatable message for your target audience and be sure to support it with relevant images.

Have a Cohesive Theme

A memorable stand design does more than stand out, it offers visitors the experience of an idea. This idea can be being able to sit in a Victorian cafe or virtually experience what it feels like to drive a fast car. The best way to facilitate this cohesive theme is to ensure that your sales team and marketing team is completely on board with the idea and understands it well enough to execute.

These are just some tips to help you direct your thinking in the right direction. It’s a given that it’ll take you sometime to integrate these guidelines into your exhibition design strategy but the dividends for doing so are long term.