Tradeshows present unparalleled opportunities for businesses that know how to take full advantage of them. And the truth is that any business that is spending the time and money to attend a tradeshow and build a booth should make sure the investment is well spent by having a top notch booth. Every business can benefit from having a tradeshow booth that is eye catching and inviting. Not only will a great booth bring in new customers, it will also catch the eyes of the leaders in your industry and hopefully the press. If you put in the time to get it right, then you will see real results. So why not take the time to learn from the experts? Below are some of the best tradeshow booth designs of the year. Which one will work for your business?

Start Simple With Popup Displays

Popup displays are a tried and true tradeshow tool. As many as half of all tradeshow booths use the popup form in one display or another. A popup display uses PVC graphics panels set on a frame, usually attached by magnets. One of the best parts of these popup displays is how easy they are to assemble – it can be done in just a few minutes. Check out some examples on Nimlok Online’s site.

Use Your Space Wisely

Every location within the tradeshow has its own pros and cons. The key to great tradeshow booth design is taking advantage of the space you have been allotted. Amada Industries’ booth at the 2012 Industrial Manufacturing Technology Show is a great example of this principle. Placed at the back of the room, Amada ran a large fabric projection screen across the back of the booth. It grabbed visitors attention, who then came and watched the excellent presentation. This principle applies in other ways, too. Sometimes it’s not about which part of the room you are in, but how much space you have in it. Houghton used a custom exhibit design, making their small 10’x20’ exhibit refreshing and memorable through the use of bright colors and bright flooring. It looked modern and exciting, despite the small size.

Make Your Booth More Than Pretty: Make It Memorable

Pretty booths are a dime a dozen. Everywhere you look there is a pretty booth at your typical tradeshow. But what about memorable booths? There are sometimes only one or two of them at any given tradeshow, but they are memorable because they are special. At the Salone Internazionale, del Mobile Brunner GmbH created a memorable and creative trade show booth. The furniture manufacturer suspended their products – chairs – from the ceiling. They added some mirrors to open the space up a bit more. Visitors loved it and remembered the company.

Sometimes Simplicity Is Key

While gimmicks can work for the right company in the right space, sometimes you want to keep the focus on the product itself, and not the booth. Benz Incorporate did this at the International Manufacturing Show in 2012, using clean and modern design principles that highlighted their tooling products. They added some integrated LCD screens playing videos with high-level details, showing off every inch of the products themselves. They finished the look with LED lights that made the display look futuristic. The whole booth reflected the company’s message of being forward thinking and high quality.

About the Author: Michael Klein has been writing articles about various trade show topics for over 5 years. When not writing, Michael loves to spend time working on his guitar skills at home or his golf game at the closest course.

An interesting infographics about how social media sites make money.

Via: USBundles.com

This time I’m posting on a more personal note. I have decided to move with my family back to Europe so there are plenty of challenges for us lying ahead.

I’m also moving onto new things which I’m really excited about – Mobile Magazine Publishing. With the technology leaping forward, Mobile Publishing is a rapidly expanding market.

As an art director of Airways Magazine, I have been looking for an easy solution to publish the magazine to iPad/iPhone and Android tablets. After a couple of months of research and enquiries, all solutions I found were either too complex or unreasonably expensive. It just made no sense to pay $700 per issue to get it published on an iPad. As a result I have decided to build our own solution for publishing the magazine to mobile devices.

We now have an easy to use platform we can offer to other publishers. It’s simple, publisher friendly and it does not cost anything upfront. All we need is a PDF file with the magazine and we will do the rest and publish it to iPad and Android tablets.

I’d say it’s pretty good deal considering what other providers offer. My main goal is to help publishers deliver their magazines to mobile devices.

Please feel free to check out our new website www.magpilot.com for more detailed information on mobile magazine publishing.

The world was saddened to learn today that Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., has passed away. He was 56 years old.

I have never met Steve Jobs. We never exchanged emails or spoke on the phone. But when I learned he passed away today I felt deeply sad as if I had lost a close friend.

I have followed Steve Jobs for many years, he was a true visionary,  an incredible business leader and an inspiration to many entrepreneurs.  I cheered Steve’s triumphs (Returning to Apple, MacIntosh, Mac OS X, MacBook, iPod, iPhone and the iPad), and admired Apple’s comeback under his lead.

Having worked with PCs for over 15 years during the 1990s and early 2000s and knowing them inside out, Apple Mac has been something I occasionally worked on but never intended on buying.  That was until I spent two months fixing my Windows based PC after which I had enough and bought my first iMac.  I never looked back and has been a huge Apple fan ever since.

It was Steve’s genius, passion, attention to detail and hard work that made Apple products successful.  Their devices are so easy and fun to use that now if you talk to an Apple product user, it’s as you were talking to Steve Jobs himself.  His passion seeps through Apple products to their users.

Steve has had a profound impact on the world we live in, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

Thanks for the amazing products, inspiration, and life lessons Steve. Rest in piece.

To remember Steve Jobs, watch his famous 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University entitled “How To Live Before You Die:”

We all need to have a bit of laugh sometime.  Today I’d like to share with you a few humorous airline PA announcements.  Since I have the honor to work as art director for Airways magazine, aviation and airline industry is something close to my heart. These transcripts are from airliners.net forum and I hope you find them as amusing as I did.  :-)

On landing the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.”

“There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane.”

“Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Memphis, a flight attendant on a Northwest flight announced,
“Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted.”

From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight XXX to YYY. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child pick your favorite.

Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines.”

“Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.”

And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Delta airlines is pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the
industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”

Overheard on an American Airlines flight into Amarillo, Texas, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”

Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing:
“We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”

A plane was taking off from Kennedy Airport. After it reached a comfortable cruising altitude, the captain made an announcement over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to Flight Number 293, nonstop from New York to Los Angeles. The weather ahead is good and, therefore, we should have a smooth and uneventful flight. Now sit back and relax – OH, MY GOD!” Silence followed and after a few minutes, the captain came back on the intercom and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I scared you earlier; but, while I was talking, the flight attendant brought me a cup of coffee and spilled the hot coffee in my lap. You should see the front of my pants!” A passenger in Coach said, “That’s nothing. He should see the back of mine!”

Why should your business have an active online presence?    Here are a few amazing statistics I came across in the past year.  These numbers really speak for themselves, don’t you think?

80% of all small businesses use internet to conduct business activities.

There are over 2 billion videos viewed every single day on YouTube.