How Should You Use Color In Your Trade Show Exhibit?

While a trade show is about professionals coming together to meet, learn and do business, the visual component is an important factor in all of this. Exhibits, after all, are carefully designed environments built to promote a product or service. They are not just spaces; they are graphical representations of a company, just like a business card or a website.

In that respect, making a first impression is critical, and since one of the first things people do when arriving at an exhibit is look at it, visual design is important. Color plays an important role here.

Working With Your Color

In most cases, a business will already have an established visual identity with its own corporate colors. This should be considered a “fixed” variable that doesn’t change because consistency, especially with branding practices, is important. So unless you plan a formal rebranding with new colors and images, whatever color scheme you’ve already established that appears on your business cards, company website, and corporate/marketing literature should be considered a foundation.

This means that your color scheme should be the basis for your exhibit’s feel and look, and while it may be the defining color, it should not be the only one. This leaves you with two additional choices for bringing more color to your trade show exhibit.

Accent Colors

As the name suggests, accent colors should be used in moderation. These brighter, more eye-catching colors can tire out the eye visually if used aggressively. However, with the right shape and placement, accent colors can also draw the eye, helping you control the flow of vision for people who visit your exhibit at a trade show.

Accent colors should be carefully placed to accentuate your corporate colors but you should always keep them manageable. For best results, work with experienced graphic designers to strike the right balance and ensure that your accent colors don’t dominate your exhibit.

Complementary Colors

Graphic design has a “color wheel” that holds to a specific standard of where colors are placed on that wheel. A “complementary color” is a color that is on the exact opposite side of the wheel from the one you’re looking at. Art and color theory holds that when complementary colors are placed together, they strengthen each other and become more vibrant.

Using your corporate colors with complementary colors is another way that you can cause your trade show exhibit to stand out, as the contrast naturally draws the eye.

If you’d like to have a trade show exhibit that is visually striking, we can help. Contact us and ask us about exhibit design services.