Get to the goal sooner, don’t waste precious time.

I am the founder of Fastand and I have a great deal of experience in the international exhibition sector. I created and invented modular and combinable exhibition stands: I invite you to read some tips I can give you to build a perfect exhibition stand, one that can give you satisfaction and, above all, great market recognition.

I hope this page can be helpful to you even if you don’t choose to buy a Fastand stand.

Where will we end up and where are we going?

In my view, within a few years we will arrive at a different concept of exhibition, with events dedicated to doing business and not events dedicated to corporate image, where the only thing that matters is showing how big and powerful you are in the market. I have never understood what sense it makes to invite active customers to an exhibition and have them eat and drink; this only serves to boost attendance numbers and only benefits the organiser.

Wouldn’t it be better to invite non-customer companies and show them the news, the technology and the quality of the company? For this, you don’t need large stands, just well-studied, well-designed and well-organised ones.

The solutions we have perfected over time are intended to help companies that have these values as the basis of their market.

1 The stand design capable of attracting the public and users

First place definitely goes to the style and design of the stand. Why? Because it is thanks to design that you can immediately stand out among the various stands at an exhibition. Design can characterise you and make you unique, giving the stand an unmistakable, top-quality line. Creating a unique, bespoke project for your company or product is our mission; unique compared to pre-made systems that lower costs and make the stand ALWAYS modular and combinable—in fact, unique and inimitable situations can be created. Since its founding, Fastand has in fact created and developed systems capable of making any display shape easy for anyone to set up, in all its parts and completely independently.

The exhibit as a construction philosophy is the basis of a noble design capable of solving all the issues related to the speed of setup and teardown.

2 Exhibition stand colour

I recommend creating a strong, representative splash of colour, so you immediately stand out from the other exhibition stands. If I am a visitor who has quickly walked through an exhibition, I am bombarded by colours, images and logos, advertising and shapes, but I am always attracted by a strong, unmistakable splash of a single colour, whatever it may be. So to the question of whether a photo or a colour is better on an exhibition stand, I believe colour prevails, since a photo will never have the visual power to attract me like a sharp, precise colour.

The next day I will remember the all-yellow stand, but I will not remember the photo that was positioned on an exhibition stand.

3 Size doesn’t matter, but quality and details do

In my experience as an exhibition stand designer, I can guarantee that I have created small stands that are far more fascinating than large stands, which are always very dispersive and hard to compare in terms of visual impact.

I love designing small spaces that try in every way to outperform large stands. I remember Fastand’s Paris experience with a tiny stand of only 3×3 metres but 5 metres tall that stood out above all the other stands with larger square footage; our stand was very busy and had very strong appeal, as if to say “good things come in small packages.”

It is the perceived details of the stand that make the difference, not large dimensions, especially in an exhibition environment where the visitor is constantly attracted by noises and colours. If we are able to stop them at the stand, then it will be essential to have a very high level of overall perceived quality so that, as a result, our product-service also has the same level of perception.

4 Height of the stand at the exhibition

Increasingly fundamental. My advice is to make small stands, trying to make the most of the structure’s height.

People’s eyes are not trained to read exhibition spaces based on square footage, but by the overall visual impact (front + depth + height).

At an exhibition, the rule applies that the bigger it is, the more important it is: make them read height, and people’s eyes will read ample spaces. This is the trick I’m revealing to you.

The taller the stand is, the smaller the things inside it will appear, and therefore the eye will read them as things of great importance, giving your exhibition setup maximum perceived value.

Because it is always about perception and not reality. Time is short and people are confused by noises, colours and new things. So remember: perception as absolute value.

5 Communicate a single concept or product simply and directly

I am aware that your company, like mine, has a whole range of products and potential, but whoever is in front of us doesn’t have time and perhaps in many cases doesn’t even want to learn everything right away. Let’s keep this in mind and play it smart: let’s show few things, the maximum would be one single new item, so that the user can remember us and discover all the other available options at a later time. But only at a later time.

I know it is very difficult to reason this way, I know it firsthand, but it is necessary to do so in order to have a positive result at an exhibition.

It is also necessary to be able to change the graphics each time, targeting the message to the type of visiting user. I have seen stands in Germany with text in Italian or Spanish, or stands with graphics completely wrong for the type of audience but recycled from other exhibitions, without understanding at all that a message, to be complete, must belong to the person visiting the exhibition; otherwise it is worthless, as if it were written in another language.

6 Lighting

Saying that light is important may seem obvious and trivial. I am not saying that the light of a stand must always be excessive and strong; it depends on the product, the exhibition, the user and what I want to highlight: playing with light is important to complete the reasoning on how to attract the potential customer.

In all the other blogs I have read about increasing lighting regardless, and this is absolutely wrong. Light must be studied according to the stand and the product being displayed.

Warm light? Cold light? Ambient? High, low or coloured? It depends. It depends on the message I want to convey, and on the impact the stand design wants to make.

If my product is brass, I certainly cannot use cold light, but at most ambient or preferably warm light. Conversely, if a product is tied to the world of technology, it is better to use cold light, linked to blue tones, to give an even greater sense of technical sophistication and modernity.

7 Make the customer always feel important but free to view the new products.

Let’s be careful not to be too formal or too informal. The stand visitor is a potential customer; they are not your friend, but not your enemy either. Let’s try to give all the assistance requested, but only if requested.

At the exhibitions I have visited, I have witnessed many behavioural mistakes, such as immediately asking whether they want information, following the customer through every move as if they wanted to steal some hidden secret, and overly formal salespeople who ask for sensitive company data even before entering the stand. We need to be present at the stand but try to make the potential customer-visitor feel at ease and not treat them like a number.

8 Let’s avoid useless storage in our exhibition stand

Too many times I have built storage rooms that seemed absolutely indispensable, only to discover that they were used to put the jackets and bags of the people staffing the stand. Enough. You lose useful space, you create dead corners that are ugly to look at and hard to hide. They are not needed. And when at a stand I see 1×1 storage rooms with a ceiling-height door, I must admit I am perplexed, given the type of exhibition today; I really don’t understand why (the only reason that comes to mind is that renting storage from the exhibition organiser is quite valuable).

A 1-square-metre storage room only serves to let you step inside, and the shelf inside it is so small that we can integrate it into the reception counter or create a fitted access compartment that can be locked with a key. But really, creating a storage room where the only thing that fits is a person—is that a Must of a small exhibition stand?

9 Respect customers’ time, the exhibition is big

There are various types of visitors: we cannot expect everyone to have the same care in listening or interest in our product, and we certainly cannot expect them to. We must try to explain without insistence and above all without making those who approach our exhibition stand feel obligated to listen to explanations. If we walk into a shop and the sales assistants are too persistent in asking whether we need anything, we feel annoyed and in all likelihood we will buy nothing and leave with no desire to come back in the future. Remember that the visitor does not owe explanations for why they are attracted to one of our products, nor even if they stop to watch a video; it could be mere curiosity and not a genuine business interest.

10 Increase the frequency of events and exhibitions

For years I have been witnessing a strong and clear change in the behaviour of exhibition organisers. Little by little they are adapting to different ways of seeing the exhibition, more in the American style, and they increasingly resemble meetings and less and less resemble the “exhibition” we have been used to seeing in recent years.

But you now have a modular and combinable exhibition stand, what are you waiting for!

Smaller exhibition stand square footage: spaces to contain costs and above all the waste of users’ time (visitors no longer want to waste too much time visiting an exhibition)

More sector-specific exhibitions and less of a catch-all container for a bit of everything

Ever shorter duration (we are seeing 3-day exhibitions and no longer 5-day ones)

Non-traditional locations for us Europeans, such as hotels and conference centres

GO! It’s time to discover our 3 exhibition systems