When attending trade shows, as a business you’ll want to do everything you can to put your best foot forward. You only have a short amount of time at these events to make a good impression – every single detail matters, from your pre-show staff training to the promotional content you show.
What pulls the whole thing together is your exhibition stand. In most cases, businesses outsource stand design to external providers like Focal Exhibitions. Here, we take a look at what the stand design process looks like from start to finish, to give you a better idea of what to expect.
Concept and consultation
The design process starts with a sit-down between the business and the stand designers. This discussion will aim to cover a wide variety of topics that will inform the design process, including the goals of attending that specific trade show, details the client wants including in the design, and general information about the brand and how it represents itself.
Visual aids such as design software can be used at this stage, to help draw up some sort of idea of what the end product will look like. By the end of the concept stage, the designers and the client will both have an understanding of what the stand should be.
Further development
The designs made during that initial consultation will be very basic, and potentially unpractical. The next stage will be for the stand designers to figure out if that design is possible to actually produce, and work out exact costs and the like. Designers can consider getting a temporary stage from https://portablestaging.uk to showcase their designs more successfully.
After smoothing out all of the details, they’ll send back the final model of what the stand will look like. Combined with other tools such as AR, the client can then either sign off on the concept, or make further adjustments if they’re unhappy with the model.
Building the stand
Once the client is happy with the final model and the designers are confident that they can produce it in real-life, the production stage can begin. The designers will collaborate with engineers and other practical designers to ensure that each part is perfect, and that it’ll handle the tasks required of it on the day of the show.
This will be the final opportunity to iron out any design flaws; by the end of this stage, it’ll be totally ready to go.
Installation
Finally, all that’s left is to install the stand at the trade show location. Either the day before or early on the day of the show, the production team will deliver the stand to the appropriate location and set everything up. With all the careful planning that’s gone into the design process already, everything should run totally according to place.
As you can see, exhibition stand design is a complex process that takes a significant amount of time. To make sure that you get the stand that your brand deserves, it’s always advisable to reach out to a design team well in advance, so that it can certainly be ready for the big day.
