Preparation
The Stand
Your exhibition stand is your shop window. It is what will attract - or repel - potential customers. It is your public face, the first impression visitors to the exhibition will have of your company.
So it must impress: it must give the visitor the impression that you are professional, efficient and imaginative. It must also be informative: it must tell him all he needs to know to decide whether or not you can be of use to him.
A lot of text and pictures slapped haphazardly on the wall will not impress; it will not convince the visitor that you are either professional, or efficient, and it certainly will not make him believe that you are imaginative.
Your stand must therefore be designed.
But beware! There are pitfalls. It is all too easy to be carried away by design (either your own or a professional's), so that it becomes more important than your message and you end up with a stand which is a triumph of the designer's art but which says little or nothing about your company.
Forget the lavish exhibition stands you might have seen at major exhibition centres. Don't be too ambitious - keep it simple.
The purpose of design is impact - it is a way of making the visitor stop and look, and then it must tell your story in such a way that his interest, once aroused by the first impact, is held. Design is simply a technique for getting people to notice something. The best results are usually obtained by the use of lighting, animation and/or colour.
So where do you begin?
The first step, as Chapter One showed, is to decide why you are exhibiting, what it is you are trying to get across to your potential customers.
You need then to look at a number of factors which, all taken together, help determine your stand design. But no matter how simple your display, don't carry the plans in your head. Sketch out a plan, ask friends and colleagues for comments and work to a timetable.