Exhibition booth design, judged once the hall is full

Apart from running events, RBTHOL designs and builds the spaces they happen in, from stands to signage. So we see a stand from both sides: the drawing that goes to the organiser, and the aisle once the doors open, where the only test is who stops.

Most of that is settled before anyone draws anything. The space, and with it the kind of stand, is booked off a hall plan months ahead, and the brief arrives last. Here are the decisions in the order they get made, and what each one costs you on the floor.

In short: book the position and the open sides, pick the kind of stand, split the floor between visitors, work and storage, put the message above head height under the stand's own light, and work back from the organiser's deadlines.

The hall decides more of this than the stand does

A stand is designed on a screen: lit evenly, viewed head on, alone. It is built into a hall between two neighbours, under whatever lighting the venue has, and seen by people walking past at about a metre a second, at an angle, with something else already in their eye.

Which makes position a design decision. A corner space has two open sides and close to double the useful frontage of an inline one. A space on the line between registration and the seminar rooms has the whole hall walking past it several times a day. None of that is fixable later with a better render.

Before doors on day one, stand at the mouth of your own aisle and read your stand from five metres at walking pace. Whatever survives that read is what the stand says. Anything below waist height is read by nobody, and anything at eye height is behind somebody's head from ten in the morning onward.

Inline, corner, peninsula or island

A booth and a stand are the same thing. Organisers and contractors use both words, often in the same manual. What changes a design is how many of its sides face an aisle, and that is fixed on the floor plan the day the space is booked.

The more open sides, the less wall there is to hang a message on, and the more the floor itself has to say.

Shell scheme, custom build or modular

The kind of stand is usually settled with the booking, because organisers sell space with a shell scheme already on it, or as bare floor. It decides what you build, what you order and how much time you need.

When the runway is short, the custom build is the first option to go. A modular system can still be turned around, and close to the deadline a shell scheme with graphics printed to standard sizes may be all the organiser will still take an order for.

Every square metre is spent three times

A stand floor can only be three things, and they compete for the same space: open floor for visitors to stand on, working space for whatever your team does with them, and storage. The drawing always gives the third one away, because storage is the only one of the three that looks like nothing on a plan.

The plan is drawn from above. It is only ever seen from the aisle.

The queue is a design decision

Put a demo, a coffee machine or a prize draw on a stand and people will line up for it. The line forms facing the thing it is waiting for, so its backs are to the aisle, and a stand three metres deep runs out of room for it after about three people.

The fourth person stands in the aisle. From twenty metres away the stand now reads as a wall of backs, the exact signal that stops strangers stepping in, and the floor manager will ask you to clear it, because an aisle is a fire route before it is a marketing surface.

Three fixes, cheapest first. Shorten the demo. Move the demo point to a side wall, so the queue runs along the frontage instead of across it. Or book a deeper space, which is a budget decision somebody made a year ago. It is the arithmetic of a session for a hundred people: throughput, not enthusiasm. The staffing side is in what a trade show actually costs you.

Seven things the design itself has to get right

Once the space, the layout and the floor are settled, these are the decisions left to the drawing.

1. Height first. The top of the stand is the only part anyone sees over a crowd, so the name and the one line that matters go above head height, inside the hall's height limit.
2. Its own light. Hall lighting is even and flat. A stand that relies on it looks grey beside a neighbour that brought its own, so light the message and the product, not the floor.
3. Colour checked in print. A brand colour signed off on a screen can look different printed on fabric and lit from above. Ask for a printed sample before the graphics run.
4. Graphics in the order people read them. The name at the top, what you do in one line under it, and the detail at arm's length, where someone already on the stand can read it.
5. Screens above the crowd. A screen at eye height is blocked by the first person who stands in front of it. Mount it high or angle it to the aisle, and make it work without sound, because the hall is loud.
6. A floor that marks the edge. A raised floor or a change of carpet tells people where the stand starts and hides the cables. A raised floor needs a ramp or a bevelled edge, so nobody trips and a wheelchair or a trolley can come in.
7. Somewhere to put things down. A visitor holding a bag and a coffee cannot take a brochure or shake a hand. A ledge at standing height gives them both hands back.

The same seven apply to an event booth at a conference, a launch or a mall activation. What changes is the paperwork: there is often no exhibitor manual, so the venue's own rules and hours decide the build, as they do for a roadshow.

Choosing an exhibition booth contractor: what they need, what to ask

A stand contractor can only design against what they are given, and most briefs arrive as a logo, a size and a mood. What shapes a stand is duller, and some of it belongs to the venue: every hall in Singapore publishes its own technical manual, and they differ in ways that change a design.

• The hall's technical manual, in full: height limits, rigging, what may hang, what the floor will take.
• Your position and open sides, and the build heights either side of you if the organiser will say.
• Where the power drop is. It decides where the counter goes, and the counter decides the layout.
• How many staff are on the stand at once, and what each of them is doing.
• What has to be locked away, counted. Storage sized from a real number survives value engineering.
• The messages in priority order, with the one that must survive a five metre read named.

Then four things worth asking whoever builds it, us included, before anything is signed. A scale plan with people drawn on it, because a render has no queue in it. What is rented and what you own afterwards, and if you own it, where it is stored between shows and at what cost. Who is on site during show days and how fast they answer when a light fails on day two, which is a different question from who builds it. And install and teardown as their own lines with hours against them, which is usually where a cheap quote and an expensive one turn out to be the same quote.

Exhibitions are one of the six things we run, from that brief to the last day on the floor.

From brief to teardown

An exhibition runs on the organiser's calendar, not yours. Design approval, rigging, power and move-in slots all carry published deadlines, the same for every exhibitor on the floor. Read the exhibitor manual the day it arrives and work back from its dates.

Move-in is the stage nobody briefs. The window belongs to the whole hall, and what eats it is not the building but the marshalling yard, the goods lift and the queue for both. Ask when the space becomes available and when the aisles must be clear: those are different times, and the second one is the real deadline.

Then sign off the graphics and the electrics the evening before doors. Around eight on the first day the whole hall discovers its problems at once, with one duty electrician for all of it. Build days and show days belong on one document with a named owner against every line, which is all a run of show really is.

How an exhibition booth is set up

On a shell scheme the organiser's contractor puts up the walls and the fascia, and your part is the graphics, the furniture and anything you ordered, a much shorter job. A custom or modular stand goes up in roughly this order during the move-in window:

1. Mark out. Check the space against the floor plan and find the power drop.
2. Floor. The raised floor or carpet goes down first, with the cables run under it.
3. Structure. Walls, frames or modular panels, and anything hung overhead on the venue's rigging schedule.
4. Power and light. The hall's electrician connects the supply, and the stand's own lighting is tested.
5. Graphics and screens. Panels or fabric go up, and the screens are mounted and tested with the content they will run.
6. Furniture and dressing. The counter, the ledges, the product and the literature, with storage packed and locked.
7. Clean and walk it. Packaging out, carpet cleaned, then read the stand from the aisle at walking pace.

Common questions

Is an exhibition booth the same as a stand?

Yes. Organisers and contractors use both words for the same thing, often in the same exhibitor manual. What changes a design is not the word but the space it sits on, and how many of its sides face an aisle.

What are the four types of exhibition booth layout?

Inline, open on the front only. Corner, open on two sides, so a visitor can come in from either aisle. Peninsula, open on three sides and backed onto one other stand, so its back wall does the work of a sign. Island, open on all four, with no front and no back, so it has to work from every aisle and keep its storage in the middle. The layout is fixed on the floor plan when the space is booked.

How big does an exhibition stand need to be?

Size the stand from what has to happen on it, not from the budget line. A stand floor is spent three ways at once: open floor for visitors to stand on, working space for demos, meetings or display, and storage. On a 3 by 3 metre space, a display run against two walls can leave under three square metres to stand on, which is two visitors and one member of staff before the stand is full. Depth matters as much as area, because a queue needs somewhere to stand that is not the aisle.

Where should a demo go on an exhibition stand?

Not against the back wall of a shallow stand. A queue forms facing whatever it is waiting for, so on a stand three metres deep it holds about three people before the fourth is standing in the aisle with their back to it. From the aisle the stand then reads as a wall of backs, which stops new visitors coming in. On a shallow space, set the demo point against a side wall so the queue runs along the frontage rather than across it, or keep the demo under two minutes.

What should you ask an exhibition stand contractor before signing?

Four things. A scale plan with people drawn on it, not only a render, because a render has no queue in it. What is rented and what you own after the show, and if you own it, where it is stored between shows and at what cost. Who is on site during show days and how fast they respond when a light fails on day two, which is a different question from who builds it. And install and teardown as their own lines with hours against them, which is usually where a cheap quote and an expensive one turn out to be the same quote.

How is an exhibition booth set up?

A shell scheme is put up by the organiser's contractor, and the exhibitor adds graphics, furniture and anything ordered. A custom or modular stand goes up in order during the move-in window: mark out the space and find the power drop, lay the floor with the cables under it, put up the structure, have the hall's electrician connect the power, then the graphics and screens, the furniture and dressing, and a final clean and walk from the aisle.

Is event booth design different from exhibition booth design?

The design rules are the same: the message above head height, the stand's own light, graphics in the order people read them, and storage hidden in the build. What changes at a conference, a launch or a mall activation is the paperwork: there is often no exhibitor manual, so the venue's own rules and hours decide the build.