When it comes to trade show booth designs, AI can be a great starting point. An effective creative framework, if you will.
By no means will it give you the finished product, but it will throw up some evocative preliminary concepts.
What’s important to understand is that, of course, AI has its limitations. It can overlook some hugely important details that could, ironically, render your AI-generated designs redundant.
That’s why it’s important to work alongside a strategic trade show partner who knows intuitively what to look out for and how you can get the most mileage from your initial blueprint.
Our article focuses on the pros and cons of AI booth designs in more detail.
The pros of AI for booth designs
The creative capabilities of AI have exceeded most people’s expectations over the last few years as it’s catapulted in popularity worldwide.
We’re seeing this with booth designs and are receiving regular email inquiries from people who are attaching images of booths that they designed using AI.
They’re heavily invested in these designs and want us to bring them to life, which we can do provided certain conditions are met (more on this in the next section).
AI-generated booth designs are essentially akin to a mood board for a creative brief. That’s how we see them.
They resemble a creative concept that an agency might present to a client early on in a marketing project. This concept captures the general feeling that a prospect or customer should attach to a brand.
Therein lies the beauty of AI. It can capture the essence of your brand and the general feelings you’re trying to evoke in your ideal client in double-quick time.
It also allows you (and your strategic partner) to explore different themes and directions far quicker than spending weeks or months jotting everything down using pen and paper.
With an AI-generated design, we have a springboard to work with and a great starting point to help us elevate your booth to the next level.
We’re not against daring designs—if anything, we encourage our clients to think outside the box and go with a daring design if they think it’ll resonate with their target audience.
While we won’t duplicate anything verbatim, the initial AI concepts will give us a rough idea of how the real thing will look.
Drawbacks you need to be aware of
As almost everyone will tell you about AI, it can’t do everything.
While striking, the booth designs generated by AI are generally not feasible or realistic.
That’s not to say you can’t have a real-life design that evokes the same emotions you’re looking for from your AI-inspired concept. You can achieve this and much more, especially if you work with a seasoned, strategic trade show partner.
However, there are key elements that an AI design will miss that matter in a real-life setting.
For example:
- AI designs don’t always take into account the materials involved in building. Sometimes it imagines materials that are very difficult to replicate in real life. One client came to us wanting smoke in their booth and we had to ask if they were planning on using dry ice or a fog machine. These are not questions that AI will pose or take into account unless prompted.
- AI designs don’t always take into consideration the show or convention center regulations. Going back to the above point, what if there’s a rule that states you’re not allowed to use smoke in your trade show exhibit? You need to be aware of the rules and regulations and consider how closely your AI concept aligns with them.
- AI designs don’t always take into consideration the height of your exhibit and potential restrictions on how tall it can be.
Other questions you need to ask
When you’re working with an AI-generated design, you need to ask these fundamental questions:
- Who is my target audience?
- What message do I want to communicate to them?
- What feelings do I want to evoke through my booth design, and why?
- What’s the best way to do this?
- Are you confident that creating a cool booth design with AI will highlight the product or service you’re trying to sell rather than potentially detracting from it?
We want to make clear we’re not pouring cold water on AI. We love its capabilities just as much as the next person.
We’re simply doing what any strategic partner should and questioning the rationale behind every decision so that you get the results you’re looking for.
Why work with a strategic partner?
If you come to us with an AI-generated booth design that you think will look cool in capturing your product or service, we can absolutely build this for you.
But as explained above, our work doesn’t stop there. We’re not a one-trick pony.
We don't just provide the structure and design. We provide you with the creative and, most importantly, the know-how based on decades of lived experience in order to help you reach your buyers in a meaningful way.
This is a self-explanatory point, but it’s so important to remember—you are not your ideal customer.
Your AI-generated design might look cool to you, but if it doesn’t look cool to the people who could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with you, it’s redundant.
That’s why we’ll probe to find out what your customer actually needs and wants.
We care about helping you meet your bottom-line ROI goals—not just about making your branding look cool.
More on our process
We have a set of general questions that we ask all of our clients when they approach us about creating booth designs, AI-generated or otherwise.
However, we’ll also ask industry-specific questions depending on the client’s background.
Here’s how this process might look in practice:
Food and beverage
What are you bringing to sample at the show? Do you need equipment, or are you bringing pre-packaged items?
Do you need a functional refrigerator or oven?
These are just some of the questions we’d ask a food and beverage client so that we could help them come up with an effective, captivating booth design.
Automotive
Are you going to bring a car into the exhibit? If so, we need to build around it.
What’s the lighting going to look like? If you’re bringing a car into the booth at a trade show, chances are your competitors are too. Therefore, we need to find a way to make your exhibit stand out.
This process is integral in allowing you to come to the right conclusion. We’ll guide you through the process, but you need to arrive at this conclusion yourself.
Reach out to us today to get started
If you’ve got an AI booth design concept and want to make it a living, breathing, storytelling asset, we’re ready to help you do this.
At The Trade Group, we’ve helped businesses like yours bring their products and services to life since 1986.
Whatever type of booth design you’re looking for, and whatever goal you’re looking to achieve, our expert team ensures unique and impactful brand experiences that connect you to your client.
Call us today at 800-343-2005 to get the ball rolling.
