Tips on Sending out a brief to Exhibition Stand designers for Space Only Booth/Stands and Graphics

Once you have prepared your strategy and objectives for attending an exhibition, completed the trade show Marketing Plan and prepared the budget you will know how much money you have to spend on the exhibition stand and the graphics.

Following on from the last blog we will concentrate on Space only bespoke booths/stands and the related graphics for stands.

Space only hire of floor space is best for making a bigger impression by allowing a bespoke stand to be designed and built to your own specifications. It is very important for your exhibition stand to give the right impression in order to showcase your brand, company and products. Confirm with the stand designer and builder that they will give you full management control from concept to completion. The stand building company can also transport and erect the stand before the exhibition, and then afterwards de-rig and transport the stand back to your company or keep it in storage.

Tips when sending out a brief to a stand designer:

• Decide if you want to hire the stand for a one-off exhibition or if you have quite a few exhibitions you are attending. You may want to purchase your own stand and reuse it. Make sure that the company can store the stand and refurbish it as required. There will be an additional cost for this with each exhibition but the overall cost should be less than if you were starting from scratch each time.
• Know your budget for each component of your exhibition project. It is important that the stand designer also keeps within budget that there are no hidden costs.
• The stand designer needs to understand your company ethos.
• The designer needs to know what it is you will be exhibiting whether hardware or software, retail items etc.
• The designer needs to know what you would like included in the available floor area, like a small meeting room, storage, presentation area, demonstration area, reception information desk etc.
• The designer needs to know your marketing theme, what look and feel you would like at the exhibition, and whether it needs to follow your brand marketing or promotion.
• The designer needs to have an idea of the graphics you would like and how these will fit onto the stand walls etc.
• Research the stand designers and decide what designs in the past they have done that you like and whether they have used the materials you are thinking of using for your stand.
• Get examples of previous successful stands that they have created so you can refer to them in your brief.
• Make you brief as full as possible including what you want to achieve so that the stand designer and builder can respond as closely to your requirements.
• Send out briefs to no more than three designers; any more becomes overkill.

 Graphic Tips

• Get a design agency or marketing department to design what you want to say about the brand and incorporate into the graphics.
• Keep to corporate colours, logo and trademark for your brands.
• Promote the key brand that you are there to exhibit.
• Keep graphics simple and visual; too much information looks messy.
• Remember the audience are walking past and they need to know what your company does or products you sell, as easily as possible.