Exhibition stand | m+a | Euroshop 2017

The task

The m+a report, the leading medium of the trade fair construction industry, aims to address as many customers, potential new customers, multipliers and industry insiders as possible at the Euroshop, the decisive leading trade fair. As a long-standing exhibitor with an established brand, the stand was intended to make a creative statement, though without an excessive budget, and provide a valuable framework for exchange with trade professionals.

The concept

In the project team, an image quickly emerged: a coffee house was to set the scene in terms of content. Coffee houses are generally regarded as the “cradle of today’s print media”. Four hundred years ago, they already connected “hospitality with progressive knowledge transfer” and in them, the “world situation in general and business in particular” was discussed. They therefore provide a suitable setting for the Euroshop stand of the m+a report, which reflects and shapes the current issues of the trade fair construction industry like no other medium. The discussions among the editors, advertising department and publishing company management should therefore take place in a correspondingly pleasant, but absolutely open atmosphere.

The implementation

Although the coffee house culture reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries, in their implementation, the i.xpo designers deliberately used elements of today’s coffee house architecture in industrial look. Alongside the modern variant of a chandelier in the centre of the stand, the eyecatcher was the open, dark steel girder construction with graphics in slate-look mounted at the front sides. The photo floor was realised with traditional tile designs, printed-on rugs and exhibitor logos. The counter and sides were made of decorative oak panels which also served as display areas for the company’s publications. A brick wall formed the rear boundary and completed the stand’s modern coffee house look. Naturally, the coffee specialties did not come from a fully automated coffee machine, but from a portafilter, prepared by a professional Barista.