About Display & Exhibit Graphics

Keep it simple.

At trade shows and in exhibit halls you have only an instant to capture the attendee’s attention so keep your display’s message minimal:

• your logo or name
• what you do in 8 words or less, i.e. your tag line
• what differentiates you, in 8 words or less, from the guy down the aisle (optional)

Think minimalistic, say barely enough pique an interest. The objective is to allow the people manning the booth to take over from there. If the display says too much the attendee may think, “I know what these people do”, and move on. But things may turn out differently if your booth team has a chance to have a conversation

Use great photography.

If you have read other pages on this website the great photography reference may be getting old. But it’s as true for display & exhibition graphics as it is for everything else. There are dramatic and excellent type-only designs, but if you use photography, and chances are you will, make sure it is top notch.

Trade show panels and display graphics are very large and will most likely require very high-resolution photography. It should be high-res from the start. Increasing the resolution of a low-resolution photograph in Adobe Photoshop is not good enough.

Here is an example of a minimum size image for an large-format inkjet printer. The vendor will probably want a minimum resolution of about 100 pixel per inch (PPI) at final size. That’s 330 Mb RGB image at 100 ppi for a standard 10′ wide by 8′ high trade show display. Images can be ‘rezzed’ up a bit if necessary but if they look blurry on your screen at 100% they’ll probably look blurry in the finished display.