Trade Show TalesBlog

Taking It Up a Notch! — The “Classic Exhibitionists” Run for a Cause

May 27th, 2014 Mel White COMMENTS

flasherClassic Family and Friends

Each year, a group from Classic Exhibits, our vendor partners, and friends raise money for Cancer Research/Awareness.

In the past, we have accomplished this through bike rides ranging from 75 miles – 100 miles. This year, we are taking it to a whole new level!! We are going to run 199 miles! That’s right, I said WE ARE GOING TO RUN 199 MILES. From Mt. Hood to the Oregon Coast. The event is called Hood to Coast. And believe it or not, we have fun doing it. 🙂

A team of twelve, along with four volunteer drivers and helpers, will embark on this 199 mile run to raise awareness and more importantly funds for Cancer Research. The facility is the Providence Cancer Research/Care Center. It’s located in Portland and is near and dear to the Classic Exhibits Family. Why Providence you ask? Easy — Mike Swartout, the Design Director at Classic Exhibits, that’s why!

Mike Swartout

MikeA few years ago, Mike heard the news no one wants to hear, “You have Cancer.” And in Mike’s case it was particularly bad — Advanced Stage 4 Prostate Cancer. His PSA was 2640. That is not a typo.

With the research and care provided by Providence Cancer Research/Care Center, Mike is still with us today. Mike agreed to participate in many experimental treatments/studies to help find a cure for this dreaded disease. Mike has outlasted the early prediction of only living a few months to having survived over several years.

His selfless approach as a guinea pig has allowed Providence to advance amazing treatments such as Provenge to the point of FDA approval. This drug is stopping the course of prostate cancer in many patients who are now getting diagnosed, something that Mike and all of us are very proud of.

So, with Mike’s permission and urging, we decided to “Take It Up a Notch” to raise money for the Cancer Research Center in his honor. Which is where you come in!

Sponsor Us with One Click

199 Miles for Cancer Research

199 Miles for Cancer Research

Please consider sponsoring the Exhibitionists via our Crowdrise Page:  http://www.crowdrise.com/classicexhibitionist.

Our goal is modest, just $20,000.  That’s just over $100 per mile.

Your donation is 100% tax deductible. And goes 100% towards Providence Cancer Research/Care Center to allow them to continue to provide the great care and attention patients like Mike and others around the country are receiving due to their tremendous work.

So, let me be corny in saying, help support us please while we “expose” ourselves to Cancer Awareness by donating to our 199 mile run.

On our previous bike rides, we would be honored and grateful to run with the names of your loved ones that are battling or have lost their battle to this disease. So please make sure you email me their names so I can have them included on our shirts.

Again, click on the link to http://www.crowdrise.com/classicexhibitionist to donate.

And as a survivor of Cancer, I thank you for your time and your donations to help find a cure.

Be well.

Kevin Carty

p.s. Some may remember Providence from their clever Pink Glove video several years ago. Almost 14 million views.

 

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Retail Displays Gallery: Word on the Street — May 19th thru May 23rd

May 23rd, 2014 Mel White COMMENTS
SuperNova LED Lightbox

SuperNova LED Lightbox

Say What?

Let me guess . . . you don’t view Classic Exhibits or ClassicMODUL as retail display builders? Quite honestly, I don’t blame you. We don’t design and build cardboard product displays. We never get orders for 1000 merchandising racks. No one comes to us for rounders or rolling clothing racks or 500 pieces of slatwall hardware.

And yet, every week we’re designing, building, or fulfilling a traditional retail order. Much of it is custom, which shouldn’t surprise you. We are an ideal source for custom retail fixtures since we excel in engineered aluminum extrusion and wood fabrication. We love these jobs because they fall into two camps:  1. Pure custom, which is both challenging and rewarding, and 2. Lots and lots of straight or curved extrusion cut to specific lengths.

Lately, there’s been an addition to the mix as retailers have “discovered” backlit fabric graphics. Silicone Edge Graphics with SuperNova LED lights are all the rage, which makes sense. Shipping large print graphics is expensive. Too often, they arrive damaged or the hardware is cumbersome to assemble and then gets tossed after one season. Aluminum SEG frames, fabric graphics, and LED lighting solves most of those challenges, if installed correctly the first time.

Did I mention tablet stands for iPads and Surface 2? No surprise. Those are very popular as well.

Show Me

Now that’s the attitude we’ve come to expect from our distributors. There’s now a Retail Display Gallery on the Classic Exhibits website that shows samples of retail projects. Sadly, we don’t get to see everything, especially if the job calls for cut extrusion. And, frankly, some clients are reluctant to share images for competitive reasons. We assume the final product is stunning since we don’t always see it unless the distributor sends us photos.

Click here for the Retail Displays Gallery. Or you can find the links in the Exhibits or Resources menu. Or in the footer on the Classic Exhibits website.

Have a wonderful and safe Memorial Day weekend!

–Kevin
http://twitter.com/kevin_carty
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-carty/3/800/32a

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29,363 Miles in 93 Days

May 17th, 2014 Mel White COMMENTS
Katina Rigall, Designer

Katina Rigall, Designer

As of today, May 18, I have flown almost 30K miles in the last three months! This is definitely a personal record, and I am pretty sure I have “time zone whiplash.” I goggled it and no results, so apparently I’m the first one to coin that term.

I enjoy creating new concepts! It’s what I live for to be honest. All the trips I’ve taken as a representative of Classic Exhibits in 2014 have reinforced that passion:  from Dusseldorf for EuroShop in February, to Vegas for EXHIBITOR in March, and now NYC for the FIT Exhibition Design thesis presentations.

Can we talk about EuroShop for a second? How inspiring were the shapes, patterns, and designs that we saw there! It was amazing to see it in person, and I hope the pics I posted to our blog gave you the feeling you were walking the show halls right next to me. Several of you mentioned you felt that way when I saw you at EXHIBITOR, and it was a sincere honor to hear that feedback.

EuroShop Photos and Videos:

EuroShop_Day_4 (81)What stood out to me most from our EuroShop trip was the extreme contrast between the innovative designs at the show, and the Gothic cathedral in Cologne which Mel and I visited on our day off (we climbed all 533 steps to the top). Lest you think I don’t appreciate historical design, let me state for the record that I fell in love with art history so much I actually minored in it in college. I studied abroad multiple times and was lucky to study art and architecture and visit many cathedrals throughout Europe, and they are truly works of functional and beautiful art. From there I could have easily followed a career in teaching, curating, or even designing museum exhibitions…and really enjoyed it. But I’m so glad I did not go down that road, because what I do as an Exhibit Designer is focused on the future not the past. It’s about pushing limits, creating new trends, coming up with crazy ideas that might not have been possible to construct in the past, and using new technologies to make them a physical reality!

We’re so privileged that you, our distributors, put confidence in our Classic Design Department to help your clients push their booth spaces to ever advancing levels of design innovation. Mark my words, someday design students will have required reading about the important contributions of exhibit designers to the advancement of design as a whole!

Fashion Institute of Technology

Speaking of design studies, on Friday May 16, I was a guest judge for the Capstone event at my alma mater, FIT in New York City. It’s the only master’s degree program specifically for Exhibition Design. Capstone is a great event, very well attended each year by leaders in our industry, where the current crop of students present their thesis projects in preparation to graduate and join us in the working world. The program has come a long way since I graduated in 2007, and it’s very much because of the amazing director Brenda Cowan. I could write a whole blog about what her mentoring has meant to me.

The student work was worth the trip across country! I’m so amazed at the level of creativity, the conceptualizing ability of the students. Exhibition design is so interdisciplinary, involving graphic/industrial/interior design, in addition to all the research and planning that go into a project, AND the final presentation is a work of art itself! It brought me back to the days of two hours of sleep each night for weeks on end. It’s an intense program, but these students can be proud of what they’ve accomplished.

Congratulations to each one. Being an exhibit designer is something to be excited about. And not only that, it’s important work. We can look forward to many good things from these newly minted exhibit designers!

Katina Rigall
katina@classicexhibits.com

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Surface 2 & Surface 2 Pro Stands: Word on the Street — May 5th thru May 9th

May 10th, 2014 Mel White COMMENTS
Kevin Carty, VP Classic Exhibits

Kevin Carty, VP Classic Exhibits

Microsoft Surface 2 Stands

Up until now, Classic Exhibits has bet heavily on the iPad tablet. You could say we’ve doubled down a few times. And, we’d be lying if we told you that it hasn’t been successful. It’s been crazy (the loading dock is overflowing with orders) successful.

Now, that’s not to say that we haven’t welcomed Samsung Galaxy, ASUS, and countless other tablets. We have. But, you give the market what the market wants, and it’s been heavily skewed toward iPad tablets in trade shows, events, and retail.

We still believe the iPad will continue to dominate, but Microsoft has made impressive inroads with the Surface line. And corporate America loves Microsoft for lots of logical reasons. Heck, with a few exceptions, we are a Microsoft software-driven company. If you haven’t tried the Surface 2 Pro, then you haven’t seen the next generation of “all the bells and whistles” tablet. With an Intel processor, it runs the full version of Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). It’s impressive.

The Surface dimensions are different from the iPad. This required us to develop a secure enclosure with Surface-specific ports. In addition, it had to work with our patent-pending Swivel Stop mechanism, which seamlessly rotates between portrait and landscape.

MOD-1334_sur_aLastly, we didn’t want to confuse you by introducing another line of stand designs. We’re already the industry leader there. So, we adapted the existing designs, like the MOD-1333 and MOD-1338, to the Surface 2 tablets. Same wire management, same packaging, same graphic accessories, and most importantly, same ClassicMODUL aluminum extrusion quality. We’re still adding more renderings to the Surface line. So if you don’t see exactly what you want, please give us a call.

Whether your client is looking for something to use on the trade show floor, their next corporate event, or in the retail application, they’ll be amazed by the assortment and the quality. This already amazing solution now works for clients of all kinds, whether or not they claim to be connoisseurs of “Apple” flavored Kool-Aid or one of the other great flavors. 🙂

Hope you all are well. Have a great weekend with your families.

And a very special Happy Mother’s Day to the Moms out there! I hope your kids take good care of you on Sunday.

–Kevin
http://twitter.com/kevin_carty
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-carty/3/800/32a

p.s. Finally, Mother’s Day would not be Mother’s Day without a Special Mother’s Day Message from Mr. T.

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RECENT Exhibit Design Search Updates (see the GIFs)

May 6th, 2014 Mel White COMMENTS

MOD-1334 | iPad Kiosk

Your Branded Exhibit Design Search

Nearly every month, we push functional or visual changes to your branded Exhibit Design Search website. Some you may notice. Some you may not.

Do you want to know a secret? I’m a obsessed with EDS (OK, that may be the world’s worst kept secret). And I force Tony, Glenna, and everyone else at Classic Exhibits to share that obsession. If only there was a 10 step program for an EDS addict?

It’s been a while since we blogged about EDS updates. Here are the major changes.

  1. My Gallery.
    • "" style="width: 300px;"

      My Gallery

      Faster: Tony revised the code so clicking on “Add to My Gallery” is faster.

    • Cooler: There’s now a URL option. This one is a little hard to explain until you try it, but copy the URL in the “Send My Selections” tab. Send it in a normal email. When the recipient receives it, it will add the kits to their My Gallery. Perfect for building a gallery between two, three, or 14,561 people.
    • Try It — http://www.classicexhibits.com/trade-show-exhibit-design-search/my-gallery/view/6012300/
    • Smarter: You can now send Trade Show Tips via the My Gallery tool.
  2. Product Gallery Headers. We’ve made them much prettier. Larger graphics and a cleaner layout. See Island Designs for example.
  3. Side Menu. On sites with a side menu, there is now a context aware menu for sizes. The Visionary Designs gallery shows it well.
  4. Descriptive Images. This one is brand spanking new. Soon there will be descriptive images showing “Backlighting,” “Reconfigures,” “Portable,” etc. Go to the Tablet Kiosk/Stand gallery where you’ll see the Apple and Windows logos on the thumbnails.
  5. Price Slider. Now you can choose your Low and High when search for prices. Start with the Advanced Search option.

Price Slider

I’m planning an Exhibit Design Search Tips and Tricks webinar this summer to cover this and other new features. Watch for the email in June.

–Mel White
http://www.linkedin.com/in/melmwhite
mel@classicexhibits.com

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Based in Portland, Oregon, Classic Exhibits Inc. designs and manufacturers portable, modular, and custom-hybrid exhibit solutions. Classic Exhibits products are represented by an extensive distributor network in North America and in select International markets. For more information, contact us at 866-652-2100 or www.classicexhibits.com.

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