An exhibition set-up guide that focuses on functionality without forgetting the impact of the design itself.

Background

For a few years now, our client has been running several campaigns to raise awareness of the issues that flushing the wrong things down the toilet can cause. 

The latest is United Utilities’ Stop the Block campaign, where audiences are informed of how much damage and inconvenience flushing items such as wet wipes, nappies, cotton wool or dental floss, even cooking oil and fats, can cause. These unflushable products clump together under our streets and roads, and end up blocking sewers, and the only way to clear those blockages is to spend millions of pounds every year cleaning and repairing the sewer network across the UK.

One of the awareness channels our client takes advantage of is exhibition stands or experiences, which we have designed and built for our client. Always in a fun and engaging way, these experiences have succeeded at getting this important message across and persuading the varied target audiences to change their habits forever.

The latest experience we got involved in was scheduled for the half-term school break around Hallowe’en, and it attracted crowds of all ages with its mixture of fun and “ghoulish fear” – an informative and engaging experience that feels like a haunted theme park attraction.

Challenge

With our client wanting to maximise the budget and time they had spent on this experience, they wanted to repurpose the structure by rolling it out on a roadshow that would spread their message across the UK.

To achieve this, the United Utilities team intended to reach out to a wide range of potential venues all over the North West (universities, museums and art galleries, shopping centres, schools, businesses) with a proposal to host the experience, so we were asked to design an exhibition set-up guide that the United Utilities team could share with potential partner venues. The guide should detail all the technical information as well as transmitting how easy it is to build and dismantle the structure.  

Solution

Filled with photographs of the set in situ at the first location where it had been used – the Arndale shopping centre in the centre of Manchester – the exhibition set-up guide we created focuses on functionality without forgetting the impact the experience design itself has. The guide includes a clear run-down of all components and considerations to take into account, such as electricity requirements, weights, dimensions, and how to assemble the set and take it apart.

We photographed details from the initial set so potential partners could envisage how it would look at their site. The set-up guide also maximises the ROI that can be realised with the design, as it demonstrates how it can easily be taken apart and taken into storage to then just as easily be rolled out again for future shows. 

The guide also includes detail on a set of vinyls dotted around the highest footfall areas of the shopping centre. These vinyls directed shoppers to the experience, generating curiosity and excitement and adding an element of interactivity for children.

The guide was designed in such a way that our client could share it electronically as a pdf file, or do short print runs as required.

The experience continues to be a success for United Utilities, and we’re already working on the next incarnation of the design for Manchester’s Arndale with the addition of a photo booth for maximum audience engagement.