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Exhibition season is here:
Make your stand shine brighter
Right, exhibition season is upon us again. The diaries are filling up, the venues are booking out, and somewhere in a meeting room near you, someone is asking the question that comes up every single year: what are we doing about the stand?
We have been hearing that question for over 35 years at Northstar Design. And honestly, it never gets old, because the answer is always different. Every business has a different story to tell, a different audience to win over, a different budget to work with. What stays the same is the underlying challenge: you have got one shot to make someone stop walking and actually look at what you do.
No pressure.
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The stands people remember are not always the biggest ones.
It's the ones with best design, messages and imagery
Here is something worth thinking about. The last expo or trade show you went to — which stands do you actually remember? Probably not everyone. But you remember the ones that had something going on visually. A backdrop that looked crisp and considered. Colours that popped rather than faded into the background. A table that looked like someone had thought about it, rather than grabbed it from the venue at the last minute.
Good exhibition presence is not about spending a fortune. It is about making the right choices with what you have. Our exhibition and display range has been put together with that in mind, from small businesses exhibiting for the first time to established brands that need something reliable and repeatable across a busy events calendar.
Fabric stands why they work so well.
They're practical, lightweight & portable as well as giving maximum impact for your money.
We will be straight with you. When we started offering fabric exhibition stands, some clients were a bit sceptical. Fabric? At an exhibition? But once they saw the print quality up close and realised how straightforward the whole thing is to transport and set up, that scepticism went pretty quickly.
The stands use direct-to-fabric printing technology, which gives you genuinely vibrant colour on 260gsm stretch polyester. The fabric is fire retardant, fade resistant, and washable. The aluminium frames are lightweight but solid. And because the covers zip off and can be ordered separately, if your branding changes or you want a different look for a different event, you are not starting from scratch each time.
If you have ever spent 45 minutes wrestling a traditional pop-up into submission at 7am before a show opens, you will know exactly how much that simplicity is worth.
Curved backdrops and the join line problem
One thing that genuinely bothers us is seeing a brand put money into a backdrop and then have it undermined by seam lines running straight through the logo. It happens all the time, and it is entirely avoidable.
Our curved backdrop displays use a single continuous graphic, so there are no join lines to deal with. The curve of the frame adds something too — it creates a natural sense of enclosure that gives your space a proper identity on the show floor, rather than just a flat wall behind a table. Print both sides if footfall comes at you from more than one direction.
The AXE: a proper step up from roller banners
Roller banners have their place. But if you want something with noticeably more presence without going the full stand route, our TOTEM and AXE fabric display stands are worth a serious look.
The fabric cover wraps over a strong aluminium frame and zips closed, giving you a clean finish that looks considerably more considered than a roller banner. They work well at exhibitions, but also for product launches, point of sale environments, and as permanent fixtures in offices or showrooms. The cover is washable and replaceable, so the initial investment stretches a long way.
Do not overlook the table.
A branded podium exhibition table is one of those things that makes a bigger difference than you might expect. If your backdrop and display stands look great and then your table is a plain folding one from the venue, the stand feels unfinished. It is a detail, but people notice.
Our fabric covered exhibition podium tables / counters are printed in full colour to sit within your brand. The aluminium frame is lightweight, the tabletop holds up to 35kg, and they go up quickly. Use them for meet and greet, product display, or literature, whatever the day calls for.
No artwork? No problem
Not everyone comes to us with print-ready files, and that is absolutely fine. Our design studio in Lancashire handles the whole creative process if you need it. If you have a brand but are not sure how to translate it into something that works at exhibition scale, we will sort it out with you.
We send digital proofs before anything goes to print. We accept PDF, AI, TIFF, EPS, JPEG, PSD, InDesign and IDML files. If you are supplying your own artwork, we check it over before production and flag anything that might be an issue.
On turnaround: we take it seriously. One of our customers ordered 100 brochures on a Monday and had them on-site at their exhibition the following day. When a deadline is fixed and immovable, that is the kind of thing that matters.
Get it sorted before the calendar fills up.
If you have events booked and the stand situation is still up in the air, now is a good time to give us a shout. We work with businesses across the UK and we are happy to have a straightforward conversation about what you actually need, whether that is one backdrop or a complete solution built from scratch.
