An important part of exhibit design (and really any type of design) is the ability to effectively brainstorm different design ideas and then present the best ones to a client in order to win their business.
It’s definitely important to be able to brainstorm ideas in order to come up with the best item to present to a potential client, but of course you also need the input from that client to make sure that these ideas are suitable. As an exhibit designer, you certainly want to be able to do the best work for your client and it is true that designers are very good at being creative. But, you don’t want to spend a ton of energy and time coming up with innovative and amazing custom exhibit designs that simply won’t work for one reason or another.
That’s why it is a good idea to do some initial research on what a client needs before having the meeting in which you are expected to present your designs to the client. Trade show displays can be relatively simple, but can also become quite complex and impressive structures with multiple floors, lighting requirements and more. The types of exhibit design projects we are talking about here will fall into the latter category.
The biggest issue is that you don’t want to appear to be unorganized when throwing out ideas willy nilly in front of a client. It seems unprofessional and can even cost you the business. But, at the same time, brainstorming is an essential means of coming up with good exhibit design ideas for new custom trade show displays. So, for your more involved custom designs get your brainstorming out of the way early and come up with a few ideas that are more or less there to present to the client. Then if you need to tweak your ideas according to the feedback you can do that later.
This way you end up coming across as organized and professional and your client never has to know just how much work it took you to come up with an idea. You will not need to explain the whole process and you can tweak ideas for a slightly different exhibit design later if necessary.