Guest Blogger: Peter Dixon

Peter Dixon, senior partner and creative director for Prophet (San Francisco), served as a judge in VMSD’s “Outstanding Booth” judging at this year’s GlobalShop. Here are his musings (and accompanying images) on the show.

I’m not sure if the absence of evocative or trendsetting designs are driven by the economy or just a lack of imagination, but there seems to have been a particular dearth of interesting or stand-out displays this year. It does seem that domestic trade shows (even one like GlobalShop, which at least has some design focus) are not what they used to be. Is there just not enough ROI? But while the show seemed smaller this year, it did seem more purposeful; if you were there you were probably on a mission – at least that was my mindset.

The images in the accompanying slideshow are my nominees for outstanding booth design. The caption for each explains why I thought the display shown is noteworthy.