The once humble exhibition stand has undergone significant transformation through the years. Today it stands as a powerful visual marketing tool that is the perfect platform to tell your story. In today’s landscape, where consumers are flooded with visuals, storytelling and authenticity become dynamic tools to cut through the noise.
Exhibition stands today are layered with a wide variety of visual options, with the flexibility to convey any message to visitors. They can act as physical storytellers, guiding your audience through your brand’s narrative.
Let’s explore the many ways visual elements can be used to build a story into your exhibition stand!
Establishing Your Brand’s Story
Before thinking of building your exhibition stand, it’s important to establish your brand’s story. What impression are you trying to make on your audience, how will you engage your attendees, converting them into strong business leads, and what techniques will you implement to convey this?
Crafting your narrative, and remaining authentic and consistent are great ways to make an impression on today’s audience. Transparency is valuable as trust and loyalty are often reflected in purchase decisions.
Once your brand has a clear story to tell, translating this into an exhibition stand breathes life into that narrative.
Impactful Visuals in Your Exhibition Stand Design
The best visual marketing begins with innovative design. The design process of an exhibition stand works as a visual storyboard, the plan of how all the elements work together to create an experience for viewers. The design allows for synergy across the visual elements of an exhibition stand.
Visual storytelling relies on elements such as colours, textures, and materials to evoke reactions, influence perceptions, and set the tone. Designing the visual elements of the exhibition stand can work to guide attendees and engage them with your business.
At Imageco, we are innovators and this is reflected in our unique, standout designs. One project where design particularly flourished was when we produced a showstopping exhibition stand design for Antalis, exhibiting at the London Stationary Show. Even though we engineered an impressive stand, which beautifully showcased the stationary on offer, it was the design of this stand that set it apart. Don’t just take our word for it, this worthwhile project is now shortlisted for the Green Award, at the UK Graphic Awards.
Our experienced Studio Manager, Becca conceptualised this stand design bringing together their branding, stand requirements, and the story. The stand displayed 100% recycled notebooks and was designed with a predominantly kraft aesthetic to reflect the stationary it hosts. To elevate the stand, Becca spotlighted Antalis’ distinct pink branding using a white underprint directly on the kraft.
As the stand was showcasing Rhino Stationary products which support Save The Rhino Intl, Becca decided to incorporate a nod to these magnificent animals and a great cause. She illustrated a topographic map of the species’ habitat in Asia on the back wall of the stand. A beautiful visual, with a meaningful sentiment. This is design work at its finest!
Engineering Excellence for Your Event
Engineering is an important element of your exhibition stand design, it provides the structure and the physical elements your audience can interact with.
The engineering element is key when designing the physical cohesion of your story, and how to use your stand’s structure to lead viewers through your narrative. Exhibitions are unique events in the sense that your business has an active audience, attendees are there to participate, learn, and network. However, creating an exceptional experience for them is what drives conversion.
That’s where engineering comes into play. For exhibition stands, good engineering makes the most of the given space and introduces them into your world. Take the showstopping exhibition stand design we created for Pie Factory, for their client Capital One. We constructed a 3D structural design, mirroring a greenhouse, complete with locally-sourced plants and greenery.
The construction of a lifelike greenhouse aligns with Capital One’s story of helping customers grow and succeed with their credit. The young, growing plants signify customers with the potential to grow their credit and Capital One as the incubator greenhouse that will make it happen.
Inviting Interaction with Your Stand
Adding interactivity to your stand can be a great way of elevating the brand’s impact at an exhibition, incorporating an element of participation for audiences, and inviting them to become part of your story.
Working with Hark and Dell to produce their interactive exhibition stand, to display at the Tech Show North meant creating a journey where attendees could explore the potential of IoT.
Utilising interactive elements in their exhibition stand design allowed Hark to invite audiences to understand their IoT technology platform, as well as experience it first-hand. They chose to incorporate moving wind turbines on their stand, which could be controlled using their technology platform expertly built into the stand, allowing attendees to control the turbine movement and speed, live with IoT.
Interactive elements played a key role in storytelling, relaying Hark’s narrative. Hark developed their own IoT technology software platform, with the purpose to revolutionise the energy industry. This impressive and interactive stand conveyed this by showing its potential to anyone who visited the stand.
So if you want to harness the power of storytelling for your exhibition stand, contact us today!
