Portable signage means a grab-and-go solution for all your trade show event display needs.
These framed materials are stylish, easy to assemble and ultra-professional, enhancing the appearance of whatever event space they’re displayed. Customize your business’ sign systems with a full-service large-format print partner like SpeedPro. Our studios provide a line of trade show signage systems to complement your brand and keep booth visitors engaged and informed — all while representing the best of what your business has to offer.
Why Use Custom Trade Show Sign Systems?
Trade show sign systems are a diverse, dynamic way to elevate the appearance of your event exhibit. They bring many benefits to any booth where they’re installed, including the following.
1. They’re Convenient
Portable sign systems are just that — designed for quick and easy transport, assembly and take down. SpeedPro creates its sign systems with you in mind, fashioning materials from lightweight, kit-compiled pieces and a snap-together, specialty tool-free design. If any installation tools are required in the first place, SpeedPro includes them with your kit upon order delivery.
The majority of our signage weighs between 10 and 30 pounds when fully assembled. We aim to make things as easy as possible because we know you have more pressing concerns than constructing half a dozen cumbersome signs at your next industry event.
2. They’re Cost-Conscious
Custom event signage systems are cost-effective additions to any trade show exhibit, lending both form and function wherever they’re installed.
Signage systems are also easy to maintain and manufactured from durable poles and frames. Whether wall-mounted, ceiling-hung or freestanding, each sign is fashioned with a sturdy, modular design that’ll last across the years.
What’s more, because SpeedPro’s trade show signs are portable, they can be used again and again across industry gatherings or business applications. Simply update and then swap any current graphics panels when you need new sign messages. The frames, clamps, bases and other framing features themselves won’t need to be changed, even if the graphics panels do.
3. They’re Audience-Minded
Custom sign systems don’t just look good. Often, they serve important informational purposes geared toward assisting your trade show audience.
For example, SpeedPro’s wayfinding and directional signage are ADA compliant. This means we adhere to the full specifications of the Americans with Disabilities Act, including proper sign and lettering sizes, tactile character inclusions, color schemes and other design elements maintaining clear, consistent message visibility.
It’s a business best practice to maintain signs recognizable to all. Trade show booths with ADA-compliant sign systems show their willingness to go above and beyond to meet the needs of their audience members and make their event experience that much more enjoyable.
4. They’re Informational
Custom trade show signs are a high-impact way to present key branded messages. Make those messages have value for your audience, and you’re far more likely to establish a positive first impression with fellow trade show attendees while also increasing brand familiarity and trust.
Trade show signs can present all kinds of information, from the practical to the persuasive. They can give directions, designate rooms or booth areas, detail products or services, ask questions — even display call-to-action-mirroring phrasing. The most important element is that they provide value for your audience, helping make their trade show experience easy yet memorable.
5. They’re Brandable
Sign systems should complement and enhance the overall aesthetics of your trade show displays. Brands can — and should — break from the mold, adding graphics, color schemes, digital effects and even specialty lighting to their sign displays. These features make signage pop, yet they also serve to set your brand apart from the crowd. Memorable branding means more brand recall, which is a foundation of effective B2B or B2C lead nurturing, as you slowly but surely establish your business as the go-to in the minds of consumers needing a certain product or service.
6. They Let You Talk About What You Want to Talk About — Your Business!
Trade show sign systems deliver key messages directly and succinctly. You and your fellow employees at your booth are then free to keep attention — and conversation — on relevant business and branding endeavors, rather than continually do things like provide directions to the nearest restroom. The best of these display signs are direct yet memorable, drawing in guest attention and then allowing your own charismatic booth staff to take care of the rest.
Types of Display Signs for Trade Shows
SpeedPro’s nationwide network of studios creates four primary product lines of custom trade show sign systems.
1. Directional Signs
Directional signs, or wayfinding signage, help relay location and destination-related information to viewers.
In trade show settings, directional signage can be as simple as designating aisles within the large vendor showroom. Yet brands themselves can creatively use trade show directional signs by placing arrows and portable sign frames in strategic high-traffic locations that point toward your booth — sometimes literally. Once stationed, these signs can tease your business and create a “breadcrumb” trail leading attendees straight to your booth, all while building a little anticipation along the way.
2. Snap Signs
Snap panel signs are the second portable sign system created and customized by SpeedPro.
This sign type mirrors high-end, large-format posters, with personalized graphics sliding and then “snapping” into place within a secure, lightweight frame. Snap panel displays come in multiple configurations, including:
- Wall-mounted signs: SpeedPro’s traditional, wall-hanging snap panel frames. When assembled, wall-mounted signage looks most like a traditionally framed poster.
- Projecting signs: Projecting signs use the same snap-into-place frames as wall-mounted signage, yet are installed to protrude out from walls.
- Suspended signs: Suspended signage hangs from ceilings, awnings and other overhead structures, such as trade show architectural fabric structures or trusses. Signs are clasped into place with hanging clips and an S-hook suspension system that assembles in just a few seconds.
What’s more, SpeedPro can add LED edge lights into wall-mounted snap panel frames to create an overall graphics lightbox. LED lights illuminate graphics to elevate the appearance of the overall sign system, plus keep it evenly lit with an LED diffuser paneling construction.
3. Sign Stands
Sign stands are freestanding signage built from a sturdy telescopic pole and sign base. They’re slim, portable features that embellish your trade show booth, closely related to customized banner stands and other personalized event graphics.
SpeedPro sign stands come in several varieties. Each variation includes an adjustable telescopic pole that connects to a mounted custom framed graphics to display directions, designate booth areas or relay on-brand messaging. Plus, sign stands are innately customizable, with SpeedPro’s trade show standing signs containing many add-on features such as:
- Literature racks
- Mini podiums
- Attachable lightweight shelves
- Sandwich board/a-frame configuration
- Single or double-sided graphics
- And more
4. Tower Displays
SpeedPro’s tower displays are multi-sided standing signs that bring 360-degree visibility to your graphics.
Tower displays are available in four main designs:
- Cube sign towers: A four-sided, standing signage, with each side containing three individual snap frames to hold three graphics panels.
- Prism sign towers: A triangular, three-sided standing signage, with each side containing three individual snap frames to hold three graphics panels.
- Vertical tri-tower: A triangular, three-sided standing signage, with each side made up of a single, vertical graphics panel.
- Backlit towers: An LED edge-lit model of the tower display, illuminating a single, vertical graphic sign for maximum visibility and viewer impact.
Uses for Trade Show Sign Systems
Businesses use custom sign systems at trade shows for a variety of purposes.
1. Directional Signs
With an onus on providing intuitive directions and location-based information, consider using directional and wayfinding signage as a familiar yet creative way for your business to communicate:
- Welcome signs
- “Find us here” sign displays
- Device charging stations
- Hands-on product demonstration areas
- Interactive booth sections
- Booth stores and checkouts areas
Creating a sense of purpose and place is essential for trade show booths. In doing so, you help reinforce the business goals for your attendance, plus create a booth that strategically reinforces those objectives.
For example, say you’re attending an upcoming industry expo to drum up enthusiasm and awareness for the launch of your next line of high-end cookery. Wayfinding signage can label a booth “test kitchen” where participants can eat food samples and try out some of the new kitchenware pieces themselves, then another section where attendees can sign up for product pre-orders and yet another to charge their phones or laptops.
2. Snap Signs
SpeedPro’s snap signs are one of the most portable and easily customizable of our event signage products.
Available in three categories — wall-mounted, projecting and suspended — snap signs add depth and originality to your overall trade show booth set up. Like other signage on this list, they are versatile pieces whose graphics can be used to feature:
- Your business’ name in high-impact, large-format and eye-catching text
- Your business’ logo or custom iconography
- Your business’ core values and company slogans
- Product or service images
- Product or service demonstration schedules
- Business contact information
- Your business’ origin story
3. Sign Stands
Their freestanding, stable design makes sign stands the ultimate portable messaging solution for industry events. Regardless of where you are, sign stands are easy to assemble and place, plus can be moved on a whim to match organic traffic flows and audience visibility.
Your sign stands remain useful and relevant across industry events, no matter the location of your booth assignment. Their tool-free assembly makes them convenient to set up, and their snap-panel frames and adjustable telescopic poles ensure you can swap graphics and stand heights to fit your environment. Use freestanding sign stands and their shelving and literature rack accessories to:
- Display brochures
- Highlight product catalogs
- Designate lines or entryways
- Create speech podiums
- Storyboard brand narratives
- And much more
4. Tower Displays
Tower displays are the largest sign system stands produced by SpeedPro. Yet even with their size, tower displays require no specialty tools to assemble and are easily transportable. SpeedPro can even add wheels onto the aluminum-chrome base, with LED backlighting available for cube, prism and tower models.
Place tower displays at your next trade show to:
- Visually enhance entryways or lobbies
- Display multi-panel, step-by-step product tutorials
- Showcase multiple photographs, angles or features of a product
- Add 3D embellishments to your booth
- Create natural exhibit lanes or traffic flows
How to Select the Right Trade Show Sign System
Wondering how to create signs for your business events that maintain your brand but serve key informational purpose? Balance these needs by following this sign system design process.
1. Consider Your Attendance Goals
Every industry event you attend should be fueled by specific business goals. Having goals in mind before even registering keeps your presence there on point, ensuring you use your time meaningfully.
Make a list of the specific goals or outcomes you want from attending your next industry trade show. Are there thought leaders you want to meet? Vendors you’d like to vet? Potential employees you’d like to scout? Does lead or prospect list you’d like to grow? In establishing these of handful of purposes to your trade show attendance — or just one — you’ll be more disciplined with your time and more motivated to use your booth graphics, features and materials strategically.
2. Visualize the Ideal Set Up
Your event exhibit is what makes the first impression on attendees. Not your products. Not your services. Not even the most expert, energetic staff ushering people to your tables and engaging them in conversation.
When you only have a few precious seconds to make that first impression, every appearance detail matters. High-quality, visually cohesive yet dynamic trade show booths customized to your brand are incomplete without sign systems and will help set you up on the right foot.
3. Think of Your Audience
Now that you have your own goals and booth look in mind, it’s time to turn your attention outward to the actual trade show attendees.
Consider what this event’s audience will be looking for in their own trade show experience. Who is the key person you’re trying to attract to your booth? What’s their job title, industry, daily work responsibilities, pain points and beliefs? Why will they pick your booth over the competitors down the aisle? What features of a booth will speak to that target person, from exhibit technology down to unique booth experiences?
Putting yourself in the mind of your audience is the zeitgeist of today’s savvy marketer. With this skill, you’ll build better sign systems that’ll catch and hold audience attention, which is the greatest currency at contemporary trade shows.
4. Provide Value
Display systems must provide value for your target audience.
That value doesn’t even have to be business-based in the strictest sense. Signs can help visitors find their way around, ask audience-relevant questions, display product tutorials, even present mini-games or quizzes appropriate for the trade show’s demographics. The goal is to satisfy a question or curiosity in the audience. Anything less turns your signage shapeless.
5. Brand Your Space
Make your value-adding signs pop that much more with custom graphics, color schemes and professional imagery all matching your current brand aesthetics.
Customized trade show signage attracts more eyes of those passing by and amplifies the professional look and feel of your overall exhibit, making it easier to convert curious eyes into engaged visitors and, therefore, accomplish your attendance goals.
Custom snap frames, sign stands and even directional signage from SpeedPro are designed for this exact purpose. You create that “wow” effect with your overall booth aesthetics while simultaneously relaying valuable information — a win-win for everyone at the event.
Get Started Ordering Your Trade Show Sign Solutions
Find your local SpeedPro studio to get started. With over 130 studios making up our nationwide network, you’ll have a nearby partner for your complete set of on-brand directional, snap-frame, standing and tower signs, all customized to put your best branding foot forward.
