Out of sight, out of mind.

Trade show theft is very really people and you will be sorry to ignore it.

It only takes once to ruin your day or possibly jeopardize your job. I personally have lost my favorite pocket knife on the show floor after opening a box of literature. I set it down and the next thing I know I was looking around for it only to realize it was taken.

To reduce the risk you may want to take the following precautions. Keep your product that is easily concealed in a jacket or pocket in locked cases or storage cabinets. Even if a cabinet is non-lockable, product or valuables that are out of sight are out of mind. If people don't see it you minimize the possibility of someone even having the thought of stealing your valuables.

If and when you do have to show your product do so inside your booth space or secure it with a small but yet elegant metal tie. Product displayed on the edges of your display or near the aisles are more susceptible to theft. Another good thing about keeping the product inside your display is that you get your prospects to enter your area, where you have the opportunity to engage them in conversation about your product.

Make sure you lock the doors to your exhibit. After all that is why you got locking doors. Keep them locked unless you are keeping an eye on them or going to use them right then and there. If your product are extremely valuable you may want to look into hiring security cameras for after-show hours. During the show make sure you instruct your staff of the obvious just in case it is not so obvious to them... Watch the product and watch your personal belongings. The more eyes the better.

One last thing you can do to account for theft or rather combat it is keep an inventory of the products displayed in the booth space. Check it at the end of every day and this will give you a chance to know how much product you are losing each show and ammunition to give to your boss when you present your case for locking storage.

Reference: Don't Let Them Steal the Show

Designer Tip: Working with large format artwork.

Five revisions in and two days late you are regretting taking this large format design project for a pop-up display or custom exhibit. It takes 15 minutes to save and you are lucky if your computer doesn't crash every half hour. Sound familiar?

If this is you, breathe... It will be alright.

A little tip is to take those large images within your artwork and save them as flatten tif files using lyz compression at 100ppi at full size. Yes, 100ppi. When it comes to large format printing 300ppi is overkill. Large format murals/prints are seen from a distance and you should be able to get away with a minimin of 70ppi.

Another thing that could help you speed up the process of your design is to not embed your images. When saving don't embed your images. Simply link them and include them with the final AI file to the printer. Embeding the file can triple the size of the artwork making everyones life a little bit more painful.

For more tips... Contact the printer who will be producing the artwork, mural or pop-up display. They should be able to help you.

Designer Tip: How large to make text for Pop-up Murals?

Here is a little rule of thumb for all of you designers that do not usually work with large format printing. First off, large format printing or designing for pop-up display, banner stands or other trade show displays is a whole different ball game than regular print applications.

Here is your tip of the day for all of you who want to know how large or what font size you should use to ensure your text will be readable on your booth graphics. The general rule is text that is one inch (1") tall at full scale or print size is readable from up to 10ft away.

Hope this helps. More tips to come including general file preparation guidelines for the trade show industry / large format printing.

Discount Labor Rate

When it comes to trade show labor and exhibiting in general spending the least amount of money for the maximum amount of exposure is usually our number one priority. Hopefully this little bit of advise should save you a few bucks on your labor.

First off, always place your orders before the discount rate. The discount rate is usually a rate that is less expensive than the standard rate if you place your orders (labor, carpet, etc.) early. The date is different for every show and can be found on the top of your order forms. This should be a given unless you got a late start.

My advise to you is to schedule more labor than you need. Yes, I said schedule more than you need. If you think your display can be setup in 4 hours schedule 5 or 6. The reason being that if you have some unforeseen problems, like slow labor that you don't have the heart to fire, then you can keep your labor for that additional half hour or hour at the discounted rate. If you were to only schedule 4 hours and it ends up taking 5, you certainly don't want to have to pay the standard rate for that last hour that wasn't scheduled.

Now there are a few things that have to take place for this to work...

You have to supervise the setup and dismantle to ensure that the labor does not milk the clock because you ordered extra hours. As the on-site supervisor you should make sure your labor is not on the phone, talking or anything other than working. After all you are probably paying this stellar worker who is supposedly a specialist in setting up trade show displays, ha yeah right, around $ 60 to $ 95 an hour. As soon as your display/booth is up you can release your workers and make sure you keep track of the time. Another thing is that you should check your rules and regulations to ensure that there is no issue releasing your labor early. Typically you only run into a problem if you schedule your labor for an additional day rather than hours. If you feel your display will take 8 hours to setup, do not schedule an additional day or labor. Additional days of labor canceled with less than 24 hours of notice will constitute a minimum of one hour of labor per worker. However, you could schedule 2 or 3 workers instead of one for that 8 hours and if you are ahead of schedule you can release the extra 1 or 2 workers you have at lunch or after the carpet is laid down. This usually works out really well because you have better odds of getting at least one good laborer and can release the others as soon as you are confident the display will be up.

Last little bit of advise is to review your labors hours at the end of the show to ensure they didn't "forget" to remove the hours unused. Oh and keep in mind that you are allowed to setup your own product at the show. So to save even more you can setup your product yourself instead of having the union labor set it up.

I hope this advise helps and as always consult your custom or portable exhibit house to double check that you will not run into any issues and if you feel nervous about scheduling extra hours, no problem, don't and you can pay the standard rate which is only a few bucks more per hour per worker. This method usually works best for larger custom exhibits.