Designing Exhibitions

Museums, Heritage, Trade and World Fairs

Giles Velarde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780566083174
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351569675
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Architecture General
• Index: Business

Whether a world fair, an art gallery, a museum or trade show, all exhibitions deal with the same basic commodities, objects and informative space.  The skill of the exhibition designer lies in using suitable techniques to ensure that the objects are explained in an accessible way to the widest audience. This guide deals with the whole range of exhibition design, describing both people and processes involved in briefing, mounting, maintaining and evaluating exhibitions. It provides the essential principles of designing an exhibition, whatever its nature and size, and serves as an introduction for the non-specialist and a guide to good practice for students and professionals alike.

1 The exhibition

EXHIBITIONS come in all shapes and sizes. As a result they mean many different things to different people. It is not even possible to be too specific about what the term 'exhibition' means, as it is one of those words which have several public meanings and even more 'professional' ones. It is a semantic jungle into which we must advance rapidly, or this book will never get started.

To deal with the public meaning first: it is generally used for exhibitions of paintings or shows, such as the UK Motor Show or the Ideal Home Exhibition,

Nevertheless, it is so much associated in the public mind with paintings that many an exhibition designer has been asked over a gin and tonic if he or she arranges the paintings and the lighting. Surprisingly enough, at the time of writing and despite some conspicuous advances, this is the one area of exhibition design still largely dominated by amateurs.

General view of the Motor Show at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, 1987.

Exhibitions, shows, displays, fairs are all words used to mean the same sort of thing when exhibition professionals communicate with each other. The first exhibitions were probably displays of goods for sale on market stalls. Even in those simple circumstances efforts were, and still are, made to display things in such a way that people are encouraged to move close and admire them. But what are they admiring? The beautifully stacked apples or pears, or the beautiful stacking in a neat, orderly arrangement? Is the stall holder doing it to please himself (or hide the back of the fruit which is rotten) or to attract the buyer? In that peculiar seller-buyer relationship it is undoubtedly done to sell more, and the stall holder knows it. So the ancient and effective market stall, now thousands of years old and still going strong, has evolved to the technically sophisticated razzmatazz of the Motor Show and, in the meantime, has spawned trade fairs, world fairs, eco-centres, heritage centres, contemporary museum galleries and exhibitions, science centres, experiences and travelling exhibitions of one sort or another.

Central feature of the Ideal Home Exhibition, 1987.

The exquisite market stall remains commonplace throughout the world; indeed that type of display can still be found in the marble halls of Harrods in London.

Chinese pavilions at world and trade fairs specialize in arrangements where quantity, and therefore presumed quality, are the only message. But exhibitions have to be separated out from stalls and shops as the former are very rarely associated with direct sales. The whole purpose of an exhibition is to persuade people of the good quality of a product; to make them consider purchasing, rather than actually purchase.

For this reason commercial exhibitions have evolved into high-pressure events, where most of the selling is done by salespeople to salespeople. Wholesalers therefore persuade other wholesalers or retailers to buy and sell on, in possibly another form, to a customer sometimes way down at the end of the line. These exhibitions therefore are often completely removed from an end product. Plastics, for instance, in their crudest form, along with detailed specifications of their properties, could be sold to a manufacturer who might only make part of a product which is passed on to another assembler, who might make the final product to sell to you or me.

Harrods Food Hall.

Of course as soon as information is brought in beside the product, things start to get complicated. Words take up space; people reading them take up even more space. Pictures and diagrams are needed as part of the explanation. Pictures need space and, if many pictures are required, where will the space come from? Slide shows emerged in the 1960s, so why not have a spoken commentary? So the contemporary exhibition begins to emerge, more and more remote from the eventual customer -except of course in museums or heritage centres. Here the line of communication is direct. In any such display the 'curator' should be trying to communicate directly with the actual user. There is no intermediary here; the basic circumstances are as primitive as the market stall. While museums might fulfil similar purposes, they have to employ much more subtle means to reach so many different types of visitor.

Displaying to sell, delight, persuade and enlighten deals with the same basic commodity: three-dimensional, informative space.

Trade fairs

The illustrations of trade fairs demonstrate exhibitions in the widest possible variety, from the simple stall to the multi-decked, island site, exhibition stand. Some background information is therefore required. Trade fairs take place all over the world, all the time. At any given moment there will be at least one trade fair going on somewhere. These are exhibitions established for manufacturers and are frequently categorized. Book fairs, food fairs, motor spares fairs, cycle shows, computer shows, business efficiency exhibitions, museum and heritage services - practically everything has its own trade fair. They are the exhibitions at which the various trades meet to sell components or services to each other, to catch up with the competition, to buy components and, as often as not, to have a good night out with the boys or girls. The public is rarely invited, and barely knows they are going on.

A typical trade fair.

Huge halls exist in major and minor cities of the world. In London we have Olympia and Earls Court and the Business Design Centre. The National Exhibition Centre is near Birmingham. Most of the halls are purpose-built; some are adapted from their original purpose (the Business Design Centre in was formerly an agricultural exhibition hall). Usually the buildings are owned by a local council or a limited company and space inside is let to exhibitors in packages of square feet or metres. These are allocated along predetermined aisles.

The usual procedure is for a scheme of booths, stalls or stands to be let out on a first come,, first served basis. The plan is normally arranged to accommodate a simple structure called a shell scheme. This is an empty stall of a consistent size, possibly four metres deep by four wide, with thin board walls papered and painted white, an adequate floor covering, sometimes an 80-100 mm platform. A board perhaps 400 or 500 mm deep is put across the front of the stall to carry a name, and behind it will be simple, adequate lighting. The walls are suitable for supporting panels or lightweight objects. This very simple box can be hired for the duration of the show and it is quite possible with careful design to turn it into something very attractive. It is also often possible to request the space only from the organizers and to design an exhibition stand oneself. The advantage is that, of course, there is a great deal more control and, provided that the organizers' regulations and the neighbours are respected, a much more dynamic presentation can be attempted. The aim of the latter enterprise is to separate distinctly the company or organization from its neighbours, to accommodate special exhibits or displays, and generally to have greater control over the expensive piece of territory which has been rented.

National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham.

National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. Superb communications by rail, motorway and road.

Government information stand, National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. Notice that the people on both these exhibition stands are as important as the displays.

The Business Design Centre, lslington: once an agricultural fair hall.

With a greater outlay of money it is generally possible to buy an island site and build an exhibition stand. Again, the rules of the organizers must be accepted, but frequently they allow for the construction of quite exotic structures. Double-deckers have an extra floor which doubles the exhibition space.

In this kind of enterprise it is not only the rules of the organizers that must be considered, but also local or national government regulations concerning safety. Structures which support people over the heads of others must of course be soundly built, fire-resistant and offer clear means of escape; but it is still possible under those circumstances to build quite fantastic, effective and graceful structures which will enormously enhance a product and provide a superb showcase for new products or special developments.

A double-decker by Furneaux Stewart for HewIett-Packard. By going on to two floors the designers have increased the available floor space from 350 to 854 square metres.

It is most important when considering exhibiting within a shell scheme-based trade fair to try and pick a site at the earliest possible moment. There are many factors affecting the selection. A site looking down an aisle is clearly going to be noticed by many more people than a site lost halfway down a raggle-taggle of identical booths. Corner sites and sites facing the entrance to a trade fair are obviously prime positions, as are island sites. An outside corner site naturally has less walls for display, but it commands more aisle. A site below windows on the outer wall of a hall can be poorly positioned, as it is hard to compete with daylight, particularly when the sun is low. The one thing over which there is no control is choice of neighbour but, as soon as this is known, it is as well to get in touch and come to terms over conflicting displays (which could be only a few millimetres apart at the edge of the stand area). Another important factor affecting site selection is the presence of heavy or bulky exhibits; if these are involved it is vital not only to have a site which can accomm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The exhibition
• 2 The designer
• 3 The client
• 4 The brief
• 5 The words
• 6 The principles
• 7 The techniques
• 8 The design
• 9 The production
• 10 The completion
• 11 The maintenance
• 12 The end result
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index