ThinkFaire Art & Science Popup Gallery

Overview

TEDxNaperville bills itself as an interactive, full-day conference. Outside of speaking sessions, attendees need to be entertained and engaged with ideas and with each other. In 2015, the organization moved to a new venue to house its growing fanbase. From 2014 to 2015, attendees grew nearly 60% and the organization quickly realized it needed to fill that new space with engaging content.

In 2013, I attended TED (the parent conference) in Long Beach, CA, which hosted a museum-quality exhibit in public interest design featuring interactive displays of world-changing products. This exhibit showcased the products and systems being built by researchers and designers around the world and bringing them into a single location for consumption and consideration.

I wanted to fill the TEDxNaperville venue with an equally-beautiful exhibit, but featuring local products from local organizations. This would help fill our venue space while bringing meaningful interaction to our local audience.

The Problem Space

To do an equally-stunning exhibit, I’d have to research and connect with a variety of local organizations, sell them on the idea of the exhibit space, design and build their displays, and do so at little to no cost.

From the beginning research on exhibit-style furniture rentals, we knew we’d have to build any pedestals ourselves. We knew we’d need 4-7 exhibits to fill the space, and we also knew we’d need to accommodate the flow of 20-30 attendees at a time for about 4 total hours.

But perhaps most difficult was that this was the first time our organization (or specifically, I) had built an exhibit space like this from the ground up, so I’d need to do extensive research on how to build spaces. The major challenges were as follows:

• Which organizations to partner with.

• The design of both the exhibit bases (pedestals) and the product displays themselves.

• How to layout the physical space.

• How to recoup the cost of materials (or even make money).

Research

Research spanned multiple categories and areas of design, from building and designing a space to determining the size and shape of exhibits. For this work, I would focus on the product selection, overall specifications for everything, and product displays, while another TEDxNaperville volunteer would focus on building the pedestal designs.

Research Outcomes

Embodying the Feeling in a Logo

Initially, ThinkFaire was described as a modern exhibit space, but as we moved through the process, we wanted the brand to feel more like a World’s Fair from the early 20th century. This would stress the feeling of new and interesting while still keeping the design centered in the old school wonder of invention. We switched from “fair” to “faire” to help create this more retro feel, and then changed the logo to be reminiscent of the actual World’s Fair rather than a sci-fi-style rocket ship.

We also changed the font a more modern, swooping font like Lobster to something more art deco or turn-of-the-century. The final font selected was TallDeco by Thomas Harvey.

Planning the Designs

I wanted to base the work on the high-quality designs and displays in the original TED conference. To keep costs low, I chose to design at a standard foam board size of 2x2ft, then I build a grid system to allow me to modularly place “panes” or cutouts around the design while still accommodating physical space for placing the products.

The final product displays would feature 2 components: A backboard that faces the viewer and describes what the product is, who’s working on it, and what problems it solves, and a baseboard that a viewer looks down upon and describes the product’s grander implications.

Designing the Visuals & Content

Visual design was inspired by the original exhibit at TED2013. The designs themselves were built on a modular grid system so that I could arrange blocks if needed in the final design (i.e. I wasn’t going to get a chance to print any of this again).

Content was designed to be easily-consumable, using simple language and infographic style visual elements. Each display was designed in the same way, with the backboards describing the story of who, what, why, and how, and then the baseboards relaying what might be in the future based on that product.

All images were either sourced from creative commons image sites or provided by the partner organization. Icons were sourced from free sites or designed by me.

Assembling the Designs & Displays

Once the designs were finalized, I had them printed and then began assembling the displays. Again, for each product, there would be a backboard and a baseboard, each made of foam board with content “panes” placed upon smaller pieces of foam board and glued to the larger boards. This is a rough overview of the process:

1. Print the designs via a partner organization

2. Cut out the prints

3. Cut the foam board backboards, baseboards, and individual “panes”

4. Glue the prints to the cutout “panes” and boards

5. Test product placement and sizing within the final displays

Outcomes

The ThinkFaire was a massive undertaking for just a handful of people to attempt. I spent hundreds of hours creating contacts across organizations, pitching the idea, creating partnerships, and designing and building the product displays and overall space.

In the end, hundreds of attendees moved through the exhibit, interacting with their creators and the ideas within. This gave attendees a deeper appreciation and understanding for the world-changing ideas happening right in their back yards.

Ignoring the volunteered cost of labor, the exhibit ended up making about $750 for the organization through partnerships and donations, making this a net positive exhibit for TEDxNaperville, as well as an incredible marketing and engagement opportunity for the organizations involved. Through this experience, TEDxNaperville was able to uphold their mission of brining real, tangible ideas to the masses.