Not all trade show booth designs are created equal. Trade show exhibit space ranges in size from 8′ x 10′ up to large islands, each of which have a different effect on your booth visitors. Therefore, it is imperative to use different design approaches in order to maximize the impact.

10×10 Trade Show Booth Designs

More than half of all trade show booths are 10′ x 10′ booths. Ten feet affords a company enough space to present their message and accommodate attendees. These are also known as in-line exhibit spaces.

In order to take full advantage of your booth space, it’s vital to utilize attention-getting graphics. One way to enhance your booth design is to incorporate curves such as a curved back-wall, curved accents, or curved arches. Curves add a stylish touch and work great for this size booth. Your trade show booth display should be more like an interactive billboard rather than a bulletin board.

Do your best to avoid the temptation of having a big table at the front of your booth. This creates a barrier between you and your visitors. You can always rent a bar height table or a LED pedestal to place literature, a monitor, product samples, and more at the front with your booth staff standing in that precious real estate next to the aisle. Also, having a small cafe height or bar height table with one or two chairs or stools towards the back of the booth enables you to have a place to sit down with your prospects without having that barrier.

10×20 & 10×30 Inline Trade Show Booth Designs

When you move up to a 10×20 or 10×30 booth space, you delve into a different trade show arena, giving you new design possibilities. You can create small work areas within your exhibit for demonstrating product, making presentations, or meeting with clients around a small table. These give you more time to catch an attendee’s eye as they walk past your booth. You can use part of your exhibit for a high impact graphic, and still show smaller detail graphics or display products on the other half.

And twenty-foot booth spaces offer greater three-dimensional design possibilities. You can now have a bridge coming off your backwall to the middle of the front of your booth. A bridge puts your name or message at a perpendicular angle to the aisle. Why is that important? Because now prospects can see your name from a greater distance as they walk towards your booth. That gives you even more time to get noticed. Plus, you can also put a tower, perhaps 10′ or 12′ tall, in the middle of your backwall exhibit, for greater attention-getting impact. Backwall booths beyond 20′ let you combine several of the design possibilities of a twenty-foot backwall. However, most exhibitors who grow to a 10′ by 40′ exhibit choose a 20′ by 20′ island exhibit instead.

20×20 & Larger Island Trade Show Booth Designs

Since inline booths tend to be a two-dimensional medium, then island booths are true three-dimensional marketing powerhouses. Within an island booth, you have the opportunity to create a work environment for your booth staffers and attendees that accelerates communication and opportunity. You can have separate areas for demonstrating your products/services, writing leads, meeting in private conference rooms, presenting to groups, and even storing staffers effects and promotional giveaways. You can create graphic messages that are seen from every side on towers, bridges, and even hanging signs. All of these exhibit elements can be combined into a single, impressive exhibit that communicates that you’re someone worth doing business with.

There is one other major advantage of an island exhibit: More aisle space. A 20-foot by 20-foot island exhibit has 80 feet of aisle space, twice as much a 10-foot by 40-foot space with the same square footage. Double the aisle space means double the chance to stop and engage passing attendees. Even a 20-foot by 20-foot peninsula space, which has aisles on three sides, offers 60 feet of aisle space.

With even larger island exhibits, you can create larger environments for conference rooms, theater-seating presentations, product demonstrations, and multiple workstations for booth staffers, with computer monitors and lead processing machines. And according to research, the bigger your exhibit, the higher its memorability. So at trade shows, bigger is often better.