Eleven Point - Booth Design

It has been forever. UGH. My apologies.
Lately I have had so many emails and messages and even a few phone calls from you awesome people who tell me that you are waiting for me to post more booth stuff.
Good news. I have new booth stuff for you.
It's actually from August 2014 NY NOW. Pretty new.

This is the Eleven Point Home Fragrance booth. It was on Pier 94 and the newest brand introduction of my awesome client Scentations Home Fragrance. I love love love working with this company, and am so proud of what we created for Eleven Point. I will post more about the line separately, but let's get to what you are asking for, the booth stuff.

This was a 10"x10" corner booth. As with most of us, they didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars on a booth but, they still wanted a presence. The goal was to create a little wholesale shop where buyers could see the line, quickly understand the line, experience the fragrances and place orders.
The NY NOW show is offering some new options for walls these days, so there was no need for foam board this time. We decided to order the MDF panel option and have them paint it for us, you just need to supply them with the Behr paint color (I chose a charcoal grey). We needed 2 ten foot walls done (since we had a corner). On the Piers we did this through FB International (via the show). The pricing was somewhere around $150 per panel (painted) and we needed 6 panels (they cut them and price them to just a little over 3' each since most of the booths are sold in 10' increments, if you go to Lowe's or Home Depot, they will be 4'x8' and you will pay around $25/panel unpainted), the unpainted was $120/panel. Not cheap. I know.
If you are local, the process they used to make the walls was super simple (explained below) and it could be easily done for WAY cheaper, but, if you are not local, it could be a pain to get this done on your own as the panels are not easy to transport and move around, they aren't heavy, this particular MDF was only 3/8" thick, these panels are floppy and cumbersome and 8 ft long.

If you decide to build a booth like this yourself, I would definitely go for the heavier MDF so that screwing into it wouldn't be an issue if you wanted to hang shelves or anything heavy-ish and remember to get the panels cut to your booth size so they fit your walls, or, you can always take 3 panels per wall and place your middle panel over the 2 others and the empty space, so that there wouldn't be cutting involved (and it looks pretty cool too).
I talked about this method with foam board here

Let's get to it...introducing the August 2014 Eleven Point booth

Here's what I did.
As mentioned the walls were ready to go - well, almost, when I got to the booth they were still being painted, but, it was done quickly. In a nutshell, this is what FB International did for the walls - they screwed in 2 little silver squared inverted U brackets at the top of each of the panels and simply hung them over the squared bars of the booth structure. (This is new too, remember how the booths were all loose drape over round poles? square now.)

No, they were not super strong and yes, a few of the brackets fell off and I had to have FB come and put them back in. MDF is not the greatest stuff to screw into, often screws don't catch and slip right out, this is what was happening, but it was fixable.

I had ordered a strip of wallpaper that was the same pattern I had designed in the line's packaging to personalize the space - I worked with Murals Your Way for this and used this same idea in all of our summer showrooms. It was easy and quick to install and is actually removable, so it can be used for a few shows if you need. Since my wall paint was pretty fresh, the vinyl didn't stick as securely as I would have liked, so I just added a few staples to make sure it was not going to unpeel.

For the booth sign, I had our graphics printed at Fedex Kinkos and I spray painted an old textured frame gold.
The wall sconces were a fun addition, they are battery operated, and don't shed much light, but they added a nice touch to the booth and didn't require wiring to install, only a plastic pushpin.
I bought several sets (again for all of our showrooms) on ebay. This particular set I sprayed gold quickly, to match the frame and the other booth details (they were originally a bronze color).

The frames on the wall were super lightweight black plastic Ikea frames (with plexi fronts rather than glass) and each one had a fragrance description from the Eleven Point line that I laid out and, again, printed at Kinkos. I had originally wanted to place 6 frames on one wall and 3 on the other, but that didn't happen, so I did a quick adjustment and put all 9 on the same wall.
Since the frames were so light, I used heavy duty velcro tape to stick them to the walls, MUCH faster and more forgiving than nails and hooks.
The cute linen grey bench was a score at TJ Max.

The table is from World Market, a gorgeous extendable table that we will be using for a while and was surprisingly easy to assemble (sign up for their emails and you will get great coupons and free shipping vouchers).

The carpet is from the wonderful Flokati Phil. I have had one of his Flokati rugs in our loft for many years and love it, so I called him to help me find the right one for the Eleven Point Booth. Once I was in the booth, I realized that an oval shape was the way to go, so all I did was tuck the corners under and it became this awesome puffy oval soft addition to the booth.


For the shelf under the Eleven Point sign, I used light metal brackets from Ikea and sprayed them gold, and a piece of wood that I had cut to the length I wanted at Home Depot. I added a coat of wood stain to it to bring it to the color of the other woods in the booth. I stained the extra piece they had cut off for me, and used it as a riser in the middle of the table to add a second layer to the main display.
Since the MDF walls were not very sturdy, I used my foam board trick and placed 2 pieces of scrap wood behind the shelf brackets to screw into - this added a lot of strength to the shelf.
(I would NOT have done a wall of shelves on these walls without doing some serious securing first, and even then, these thin MDF walls are not built for lots of shelving, I wouldn't risk it).

Here are some photos of the process, and the finished booth.

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!

round poles, flat poles...

This is a quick post to let you know that whether your booth comes equipped with round pipes
(photo A)

or flat pipes (photo B) (sounds strange, but some do!)

you can attach your foam board to either.

If you are not getting too fancy (ie: putting up shelving or hanging anything that is heavy to the foam board) the quickest way to attach your foamboard to the pipes is using heavy duty sticky velcro tape.

I love this stuff! But remember, it is STICKY! You won't be able to re-stick it on your foam board once  you have stuck it, you get one chance for this only!

You can buy this at hardware stores or even some office supply stores, I go to http://www.homedepot.com/ or http://www.lowes.com/ usually. It has 2 parts to it that "Velcro" together, one strip will stick to the other, and both strips have sticky outsides. Simply take a good sized piece of it, stick it to the back of your foam board up close to the top edge (but not over the edge, still on the back), peel off the other side and stick it right to the pole/drape/curtain...whatever it is. Presto, your wall is up! I know right? so simple!...

Another popular way to hang foam board to booth structures is using tie wraps, or cable wraps,

these thingies:

Basically the easiest way to use them is to puncture a hole through your foam board a couple of inches below the top edge and stick your tie wrap through the hole from the front, then around the pole/pipe and then secure it closed, you can clip off any excess tie wrap bits that are ugly, too visible or sticking up. DO NOT tie the tie wrap SO tight that it rips your foam board, because then, you are in trouble. Tie them just tight enough to hold them in place and then use some tape or velcro to straighten them out and position them.

Now, this whole sticking the walls up part  is quite simple, but take my advice on a couple of things

1- Make sure that the bottom edge of your foam board is ON the floor, don't try to hang it up an inch or so above the floor- your board will be straight and much stronger if it is ON the floor.

 

2- Plan your foam board layout BEFORE you start sticking stuff up willy nilly.

For example, if your booth is 10' x10' and you know your foam board is 4' wide, how are you going to plan your walls?...decide if you want to start with 2 sheets of board up against each corner (or side wall) and then one overtop, in the center. In other words, the center sheet would overlap on each of the side sheets, like this:

You would then repeat this same process on each of the side walls, thus using a total of 9 sheets of foam board.

*Remember, if you are going to use any sort of a clamp type lighting solution, the clamps will also help to secure your foamboard to your booth's structural pipes.

I will give you several more layout possibilities in the next post, stay tuned!