Wednesday, July 21, 2010

more layout options

I had shown you an easy foam board layout for a 10'x10' booth here , by using 3, 4'x8' foam board panels per wall. You would place a panel at each side, right to the corner and overlap a 3rd panel in the center of the wall, like this (this shows one wall).
For a 10'x 10' booth, this design layout would use 9 panels of foam board.


Here is another way to plan your layout.
Find the center of your wall. Line up 2 panels of foam board so that they meet in the center of your wall. Now you will have 1 foot left of space on either side to cover up.

At this point, you can play around with your design a little bit...
1- You can start putting up your side walls now, but start at the front poles on each side, like this.
You will have 2 panels per wall, on your back wall, the panels will be centered, on the side walls your panels will be lined up with the front poles. Result will be 2 feet of unfoamed wall on each of your side walls (the area near the back of your booth), plus, 1 foot on each side of your back wall that is unfoamed. In other words, your 2 back corners will be open.

2- Here comes the fun part...well, some of us weirdos think this is fun!...
You can now decide how you would like to cover your empty space in the back corners.

You might want to use a panel that is scored down the center to fit into the corners. You can slip the excess behind your already set panels, or trim them with a sharp box cutting tool/blade.

You might decide to make a diagonal wall, by attaching a panel from your back wall to your side wall. There are no rules here...you can do both corners differently, one as a fit corner and one as a diagonal, get creative! This can actually make your very square booth look a little bit more interesting and architectural.

* A note here on storing excess samples or supplies. If you decide to do a diagonal wall, you can actually use the space behind it for some storage! Sometimes we simply tape one side closed on the bottom near the floor and this way we can open the diagonal wall when we need to get back there. (very convenient!)

see our diagonal wall (below) on the right, we displayed our press features on it.
we also kept the trunk in front of it to keep the wall in place!

we did the same thing here (below) with a diagonal wall.

If you make a mistake, cut down your foam board in the wrong place or find that your booth is not exactly the dimensions you had planned for, or the perfect square you had hoped for, don't sweat it, once it's all up and your samples are displayed, if a seam is not perfect, or if one wall is not exactly the mirror image of the other, it won't show...relax, no one will notice! If you need to cleanly run white tape down all your seams to keep things straight and secure, do it! it will look fine (try to use matte rather than glossy tape for that!), if you need to use some heavy duty clamps or extra velcro tape or hot glue- do it!...this is all illusion, it doesn't have to withstand weeks or months of use, it's temporary and really just theater, keep that in mind!

6 comments:

  1. Hi! I love that white round table in the center of your booth! Where is it from?

    ReplyDelete
  2. thank you!
    the large table was a yard sale find that I painted high gloss white and the small is Ikea...but in all honesty, the large table top was not a match with the table legs, I rigged it up to stand properly and it worked, so if you can find some interesting old wooden table legs, you can usually find a way to drill them into a round table top. good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm in the process of designing a trade show booth from foam core (inspired by your awesome posts) and I'm wondering if you ever ran into any difficulty with the fire marshal because they weren't fire retardent, or did you treat them so they were?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jill! thank you for your kind words, I would love to know how your booth turns out - should be great ;-) ... this is a good question. It will really depend where your show is, and how strict they are about this, but I never had a problem and used this technique more than a dozen times. I was told by another exhibitor that she was once questioned and told them she was selling the decor at the end to one of her retailers who would be creating a pop up shop in their shop with her products... they said that as long as it's for sale, it's within the rules. (Maybe this will help?) Have a great show Jill!

      Delete
  4. Hi! I don't see the part about how you secured the foam boards to the curtains that come with the booth.. how do I make them stay? We aren't allowed to use any tools at the tradeshow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Michele, take a look at this post - you should find the answers you are looking for!
    https://bluedogzdesigncom.blogspot.com/2010/07/round-poles-flat-poles.html

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.