Stand design
Ten common mistakes in stand design
Lokman Türkoğlu · Founder & Head of Design · 2 min read · Last updated:
Short answer
What are the most common stand design mistakes?
Four recur most often: blocking the entrance with a counter, keeping the company name at eye level where the crowd hides it, adding storage to the plan late, and bringing every catalogue product to the stand. To these add leaving lighting to the hall, sending artwork late, and skipping organiser approvals. All of them can be fixed at design stage; fixing them on site is either impossible or expensive.
- Cheap in design, expensive on site
- how the cost of fixing a mistake changes with the stage
Plan and flow mistakes
None of the mistakes below is rare; a handful of stands repeat them every season. The first four belong to the floor plan, and all of them take minutes to fix at drawing stage.
- Blocking the entrance. A tall counter at the front keeps visitors out. Put it beside the opening, perpendicular to the flow.
- Leaving storage to last. A store added at the end has nowhere to go, and by day two the space under the meeting table becomes one.
- Opening the meeting table to the aisle. With a crowd passing behind them, visitors cut the conversation short.
- Not reading the aisle. Without knowing where the main entrance and the large exhibitors are, the entry point cannot be placed correctly.
Graphic, lighting and display mistakes
The second group concerns the visible face of the stand. These come out of surface and display decisions rather than the plan, and what they share is that each one lowers the chance of being noticed at all.
- Keeping the name low. A logo at eye level disappears behind the people in front of it. The name goes up.
- Leaving lighting to the hall. Under ceiling light timber reads grey and fabric reads flat; a stand with no lighting of its own stays dark.
- Bringing everything. A stand showing forty products shows none of them. One hero and a few representatives will do.
- Putting products on the floor. A small item is only noticed on a plinth near eye level.
All four are caught by a few minutes of checking at design stage. The order we use is written out on our stand design page.
Calendar and approval mistakes
The last two sit not in the design but in the calendar carrying it. Neither surfaces before show week, and by the time they do there is neither time nor room to put them right.
- Sending artwork late. What is lost to a late file is not the printing but the final check. A wrong colour or an old logo version is only caught on that round.
- Skipping organiser approvals. Height, rigging loads, double decks and power are declared in advance. An undeclared rigging arrangement comes down on build-up day.
What these two share is that both come from the calendar. Build it backwards from the opening date and name the person responsible for each step.
One last note: most mistakes are not the designer’s but the result of an unresolved question. Every question left unanswered in the brief comes back as a problem on site.
Can these be fixed on build-up day?
Some can: furniture positions, lighting angles, product placement. Wall positions, graphic sizes and the store location cannot.
Who should check the design?
Someone who will actually work the stand should look at it. If only marketing approves the plan, the day-to-day problems surface on opening morning.
Sources
- German trade fair industry association — AUMA
- The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry — UFI
- Venue technical regulations — Messe Frankfurt