I was paying attention to booth design as I browsed the ACC show in Charlotte yesterday.\u00a0 I want to revamp my booth design, and the Artisans of the South Carolina Cotton Trail that I am a member of wants to do a booth design workshop.<\/p>\n
I was looking for what worked visually, and yet was inexpensive and something one person could manage, as this would fit both for me and for the ASCCT group needs.<\/p>\n
One artist had used wooden window shutters, something I had heard of before but not seen.\u00a0 I had not been able to get my head around how this would work, but it worked very well!\u00a0 She had two tall ones with the slats in them, left in their natural finish.\u00a0 She had them folded at a right angle, and slats removed at the same height on each one.\u00a0 Then she had a natural finish board run through the empty slat space, which formed a shelf.\u00a0 She had two shelves on each set.\u00a0 These shelves were at or slightly above\/below eye height, and held two displays each.<\/p>\n
In front of this she had a shorter set of shutters, again with empty slats, and a larger long board that ran all the way across the space between the two shutters to form a counter.\u00a0 This also served to block off the back of the booth, and the tall shutters from access.\u00a0 Which meant she could put more expensive work on the tall shutter shelves, and have them very visible, not behind glass, but fairly secure at the same time.<\/p>\n
On her counter she had flat containers filled with coffee beans, and these were used to stage rings and bracelets and such – the beans held the rings and bracelets vertically, so that you could see them better.\u00a0 Very clean look.<\/p>\n
On her “walls” she had covered the black drapes with blinds that complimented the natural look of the shutters and counter.<\/p>\n
Her displays for earrings were pretty cool – she had taken small river rocks and drilled two holes in each.\u00a0 Then she had a metal post glued into each hole, and then two metal cross-pieces soldered near the top across both vertical pieces.\u00a0 The earrings then hung from the metal cross-pieces.\u00a0 All very organic looking.<\/p>\n
Another booth I saw had used beach sand in flat containers instead of coffee beans.\u00a0 I thought this did not work as well, as there was sand scattered all around the containers on the counter.\u00a0 Messy.<\/p>\n
Several booths had a range of the cases that have a metal frame and you insert glass or plexi panes in the fronts, sides and top.\u00a0 Interestingly, several only had glass in the top, so that you could reach in and touch the work, which I really liked.\u00a0 Having the glass on the top let them use it as a counter space for their credit card machines, writing checks, wrapping purchases, etc.<\/p>\n
A number of booths had used hand made paper as the bottom surface of their displays.\u00a0 I thought this was rather interesting, and mostly worked well – except at one booth where the owner ran out of paper before she ran out of bottom surface.\u00a0 That did not look as good!<\/p>\n
Lighting was another thing I tried to pay attention to.\u00a0 Interestingly, the best ones you did not even notice the lighting, it was so good.\u00a0 Looking back I think it was hidden in the cases as well as in some overhead lights that were so well placed I never noticed them.\u00a0 At other booths the lighting was less than adequate, or intruded on viewing the work.\u00a0 Several people had put up their tents, as you would outside, and had their lights strung from the “celing” of the tent.\u00a0 That actually worked pretty well!<\/p>\n
A pair of artists we met said they knew a jeweler who bought electric conduit at each show and used that to string his lights, then left it as trash at the end, so he never had to carry it around.\u00a0 Interesting way to do it!<\/p>\n
I would love to hear from others who have good ideas about booth display and lighting.\u00a0 If you want to share a photo of your booth e-mail it to me at ruralart@earthlink.net and I’ll include it in a future blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was paying attention to booth design as I browsed the ACC show in Charlotte yesterday.\u00a0 I want to revamp my booth design, and the Artisans of the South Carolina Cotton Trail that I am a member of wants to do a booth design workshop. I was looking for what worked visually, and yet was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}