By Amy Clay
March 2025
When you spend as much time planning and executing public meetings and open houses as the Rasor team does, you start to think in terms of how best to impart a lot of information to a diverse audience in a short time. While informational boards are often the tool of choice, they can be unwieldy to transport and don’t always stand up well over time. A pop-up trade show-style display can be a long-lasting, easy-to-carry option. Read on for five tips to make one that pops.
1. Define Your Goals and Audience
First things first: before you can create, you need to consider who you’re educating, and what you want them to learn. Are you simply informing? Are you persuading? What’s the endgame for your outreach? Maybe you want your audience to vote a certain way, maybe you want to pique their interest in a product, or maybe you just want them to feel informed and excited about a new service.
From there, think about the top 3-5 messages or takeaways you want to be sure your audience understands after viewing your display. Distill those items down to their essence: consider the key words and images that will convey them best. Now consider your audience: what’s most important to them? At the axis of these two points you’ll find the sweet spot you’ll build your display design around.
2. Impactful Images
As much as possible, let your graphics do the talking. If it can be explained with an image instead of copy, do it. If it can’t, use an impactful supporting image to draw the viewer’s eye to your copy. Think bright colors, action shots, aerial views, renderings.
3. Keep Your Copy Short, Sweet, and Clear
Bear in mind that most of your attendees will only spend a minute or so at each display. Stick with short, punchy copy – think headline, subheads, and bullets. Your main headline at the top should be the overarching concept for the whole display. The subheads will each communicate a supporting idea, with the bullets supporting each of those. Incorporate a QR code to drive people to a website or flyer that has more information on the topic at hand. Remember that graphics speak louder than words. Is there a table, graph, or map that would communicate important information at a glance? If so, consider incorporating it into your overall design. Your end goal is to have the viewer walk away with a new idea or action that’s caught his interest – copy that?
4. Focus on the Visual Hierarchy
A typical pop-up display is about 10 feet tall and 7 feet wide. You want to guide the viewer’s eye through the display by organizing elements strategically. Think about the story you want to tell, and about how most people’s eyes take in large spaces – typically top to bottom and left to right. How does your story fit into that? Can you tell it in individual chunks, each with its own main idea and supporting information? Or does it require an overarching theme (headline) broken down into subheads?
Keep your most important information in the center at eye-level and remember that most people won’t kneel or bend to closely read the bottom of the display – reserve that bottom portion for a branding tagline or colorful border.
5. Everything Else
A few last tips – be sure to incorporate your branding elements, like logos and colors. Include a QR code to your website at a level that’s easily scanned (and of course include your URL). Test your setup before the big day so you know how to put it up and take it down (sometimes it takes more than one person.) And finally, be sure to have a team member stationed nearby to answer questions and help give the display info context.