Want to be the star attraction at the trade show?
Then, get ready to stand out and make a splash in the crowded sea of exhibitors, with a creative trade show booth design.
Your investment in a trade show appearance offers you a great opportunity to connect with prospective clients and grow your brand profile. An aesthetically pleasing trade show exhibit design or trade show display design can work wonders for your brand appeal.
But they cannot be created overnight. Instead, they require careful planning driven by creative booth design ideas.
10 tips for successful booth designs at trade show
For a successful trade show booth design, employ the following booth design ideas.
1. Determine the Location of Your Booth
If you are not familiar with the trade show venue, then study its layout to select a proper location for your booth.Â
When selecting the location for your booth,Â
- Ensure it is a prime location that attracts high-volume traffic. Like for instance, the pathway to the restroom or food stall, or a location that faces the end of a big row.
- Avoid a location that obstructs visitors’ view of your booth, like low ceilings, or columns, and so on.
- Review nearby exhibits to find out whether any of them have booth designs that can interfere with the message that you are trying to send across to the audience.
2. Prioritize your booth design
Remember your trade show booth’s layout and trade show display design is what that will have an impact on your ability to connect with the audience and attract leads.
This can be ensured by
- Keeping all the text on display design near eye level. This will allow the visitors to read it easily.
- Including a variety of displays, like a mix of reading materials and visuals. They will appeal to different audience preferences.
- Minimizing clutter.
- Ensuring own lighting arrangements to create a warmer atmosphere; and highlighting your products.
- Adding an interior wall which will increase the amount of display space considerably.
- Designating proper spaces for seating, storage, etc.
Aside from the above, you also need to ensure that your trade show exhibit design speaks to the audience in the aisles also rather than to the audience within your booth only.Â
3. Make your Display InteractiveÂ
Your trade show display design should be interactive if you want the visitors to engage with it.
Make it even better by including Promotional product giveaways; Product demos; Photo Booth with games; Digital Signage and/or interactive touch-screens that enlighten visitors about your products/services; and friendly and responsive staff.
An interactive trade show display design will entice and engage the visitors, better.
4. Keep the messaging brief and impactful
Your messages must be simple, brief, crisp, and powerful with an impactful heading in large, readable font that will touch the audience’s hearts. Besides, ensure your company logo is present in varied areas of the booth. Additionally, they should all be higher than waist-height, higher than 3 to 4 feet. This will also reinforce your brand’s visibility and viability as well.
Eventually, they will be easily viewable by the audience even from a distance.Â
5. Get your graphics right
Your booth will have certain areas that are more visually important than other areas. Like for instance, back wall which is the focal point for booths that are small and mid-sized ones.
To make your trade show booth design a standout, infuse the most important design elements with message and logo in the areas that are more visually important.
Booths that are large contain multiple focal points. Some of them may even have two back walls that will be central to the booth’s graphical brand. Hence, it needs to have the most crucial pieces of information relating to your brand.
6. Use the appropriate colors
Color psychology plays a critical role in influencing visitors’ thought processes.Â
People get drawn to different colors for various reasons. Hence, the colors and tones you select for your trade show display design can make or break it.
Prime colors like blue, green, white, etc, generally look more professional but they are not big-time attention grabbers. Instead, colors like red, yellow, and orange are more engaging and vibrant. By using them creatively in your trade show exhibit design, they can work wonders. However, at the same time, they should not be excessively used as they can turn off the visitors.
7. Leverage visuals in a creative way
When you consider your trade show exhibit design, you generally will have many design options.
To make a lasting impression, try out the element of surprise to grab visitors’ attention. Like for instance, some kind of element that does not exist in the center of your exhibit space, nor does it belong there. This will create an element of surprise, and encourage the visitors to step inside your booth and engage with your brand. Â
8. Ensure images have proper resolution
 The images contained in the trade show exhibit design must have proper formatting and resolution.
Trade show display requires high-resolution images and properly formatted graphics. Else, they will look too blurry or stretched which will put off the visitors.Â
To play safe, hire a professional designer to create your materials in line with spec sheet from your supplier, before you send it for printing.
9. Keep your brand on point
Your Trade show booth design must sport consistent branding throughout the whole of your booth area. This means, from banners to freebies, and all of other design materials, your brand image and theme needs to be consistent, and on-point, from top to bottom.
10. Maximize the available space
When you consider your space, don’t forego empty and negative space.Â
Leverage them for your trade show display design in a creative way that will amplify its appeal in the eyes of the audience. At the same time, ensure that the space is not dotted with clunky furniture or bulky inventory. Instead, keep it clean and inviting in a way that will make the visitors feel comfortable when interacting with your staff.
Similarly, ensure your booth graphics contain at least 40 percent space. This will make sure that your message or brand does not get buried in too many visuals.
