Trade Show Graphics - How Do You Know If You Need Help?

Having helped our customers with their trade show displays graphic designs for the last 30 years I've become familiar with a wide range of skill levels associated with trade show graphics design. There are two primary areas where knowledge is beneficial. Area 1: What type of content is necessary for your trade show graphic usage? Area 2: What basic technical understanding must the designer have to achieve their goal?

Area 1 - What type of content is necessary for your trade show graphic?

Initially this seems like a single answer type question. That answer is reduce your verbage as much as possible and use eye catching images to get your points across. Tell the customer who you are and what you do in as few words as possible. For many tradeshow environments that is good advice. But that may not always be the best advice. Lets say you're at a show where there is nothing but engineers attending to see the latest in engineering design software. You may want to go a little further with your details than who you are and what you do in terse language or appropriate visuals. The engineers maybe looking for a particular detail that should be in print on a graphic that normal visitors would have no knowledge of its importance. Or if your show specifically narrows the audience then the general who are you and what do you do will not be sufficient to attract and hold prospects looking for more specific.

Area 2 - What basic technical computer understanding must the designer.

The design of the computer files needed to produce the graphics for your trade show displays in large format for trade show displays requires previous knowledge or understanding of large format graphic layout. Because you or your designer create the images for the web and most often especially if then you probably need help designing the large format graphic artwork. The web requires the smallest possible file be create and then saved with the minimal amount of storage so that it will transverse the web at the fastest possible speed. This is not close to type of file needed for trade show graphics. Most trade show display companies use RIP (Raster Image Proccessing) software to produce the large format graphics and most of those RIPs need graphic designed at 100% size and 100 pixels per inch. Most of these files are fairly large in size (50 - 600 Meg). It is imperetive that the designer examine his files at full scale on his monitor for quality because that is how they will appear in print.