Orange Coast Pneumatic’s leadership has over 75 years of experience serving the Medical Manufacturing Community with their Pneumatic requirements in Orange County, California.
I was asked to design a booth for Orange Coast Pneumatic’s MD&M Tradeshow Booth and be involved in the whole process of planning the show in a team of four. We had Ric monitoring the registration of the booth, Amy in charge of hiring and managing the models and women’s apparel for the show, Ryan ensuring that we had all of the electronics needed to display our booth and giveaways, and lastly me. I was in charge of managing all of the graphics for the tradeshow.
The team of four had a planned calendar checklist! There were some modifications here and there, but overall everyone stuck to it and all deadlines were met successfully! This event took two months to plan and set up. It was an amazing experience and I’m excited to share my process with you!
The Booth
My first task was the biggest and most daunting, the 20 foot wide by 8 foot tall booth. This piece took the majority of the time to complete. There were many ideas, concepts, and rounds for this booth – 33 rounds to be exact! The options were endless… a background with solid color, shapes, photos? To blur or not to blur? Drop shadows? Strokes? Don’t even get me started on layout and sizing! The design process for this piece was incredibly fun and I loved every second! It had to be just right to make a great impact at the show. The design evolution can be seen below:
Here is the final design:
Once that was done the counter to go in the booth came next. This was very simple and straight forward. We felt that the message seen in the center panel of the booth was a good summarization of the company and what it offers. The plan was to only get one, but it arrived and we loved it so much that we order a second one to balance out the booth space.
The Videos
After the booth was completed the videos were next on my to-do list! The videos were a compilation of the best of the best SMC clips. I viewed 20 minutes worth of footage to find the best 3 minutes to loop on the TV at the show. Once the video editing was done we put it next to Alicat and GoPro footage. One of the giveaways we were doing were GoPros, the other being iPads. An important element included in between the videos was a graphic letting people know that we had a giveaway at all!
The Print Design & Badges
Next to design the print pieces to hand out at the show! I compiled a booklet loaded with information on the services provided by Orange Coast Pneumatics, SMC, and Alicat. It was an 8.5×11 booklet. In case visitors didn’t want to carry around something that size I also created a quarter page club flyer with a promo code included on it for their next purchase. The club flyer was perfect to stick in their pocket or slide into the booklet if they decided to take one of those too. It was very convenient and functional.
Then the badges were the last piece of print material I needed to complete. We had all of the people manning the booth included. They each had a name tag to promote the giveaway and it was more visually appealing than that standard event badge to enter the venue.
The Men’s Apparel
The team and I looked for the right style of shirt for the men working in the booth. Once we selected the shirt it was my responsibility to make sure the logo graphics, sizes, and quantities were ordered properly. We ordered our shirts and embroidery from LogoUp.
At this point all of my responsibilities for the show were fulfilled. Every deadline was met and now it was time to wait for the show to arrive. When it finally came I got to go the day before it started and look at the booth once my team had it set up.
The booth really came to life at the show.
The Web Graphics
While the show was going on there were social media graphics to let people know that Orange Coast Pneumatics was at the MD&M tradeshow.
The Packaging
I designed sleeves for the GoPro and iPad prizes that were shipped to the winners. It added an additional level of professionalism to the Orange Coast Pneumatics brand.
The Follow Up Email Graphic
The very last thing that we did was reach out one more time to all of the people that actually stopped by the booth to offer the promo code. Giving them one last reminder to use it to get a discount on the Orange Coast Pneumatics website. The quality products are something that will improve any customer’s unique needs and the discount will encourage them to try it out and experience the product efficiency for themselves.
Follow up
The show was a huge success for Orange Coast Pneumatics. Thousands of people stopped at the booth and the booth was the talk of the show. People were asking if they were going to be there next year and where so that they could position themselves nearby. The traffic at the show was overwhelming and people were coming down the aisle asking if we were the booth everyone was talking about. When they arrived they were greeted by the models and got to speak to technicians about their projects. Thousands of leads were gathered and created new clients for Orange Coast Pneumatics.