Mitchell Mauk, Principal, Mauk Design
Exhibit design is a confluence of architecture, technology, innovation, and even fine art, says Mitchell Mauk, founder of California-based Mauk Design. With over 30 years of experience designing for clients such as Apple, McDonald’s, Duncan Aviation, and PlayStation, and even doing advanced furniture design for Herman Miller, Mauk still lets communication drive his designs for exhibits and environment, and looks for inspiration in things that blow him away.
We caught up with Mauk to talk about his design process, how exhibits are evolving, and what excites him about the future.
Event Marketer: How did you get introduced to trade shows?
Mitchell Mauk: When I was 13, my family went to EXPO ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. It was spectacular. For Japan, it was sort of a coming-out event. For three days, my brother and I flipped out and, looking back, I can say that’s why I became an exhibit designer. The U.S. Pavilion was designed by architects Davis Brody Bond and graphics designers Chermayeff & Geismar. The structure was almost buried under an air-supported cable roof, which no one had seen before. They had a moon rock there, straight off the Moon. The way it was displayed, with spacecraft floating inside the exhibit, was spectacular. Yeah, I’d wait in line to see that. World expos are a great place to experiment because a pavilion is more permanent than a trade show and has to function on a daily basis, but still not so permanent that it has to not leak for 50 years. I find that really intriguing.
How are you seeing trade show exhibits evolving?
Exhibits are getting lighter, which is great. More materials are recycled and recyclable, so that’s a given for our clients. The price of video walls has plummeted, making it easy to build your entire exhibit out of video walls, which can be numbing with so much flashing video everywhere. I think that significantly impacts communication and yet I think that’s where trade shows are headed. It’s better to use video walls sparingly. The other issue with video walls is the cost of media, which may only be used a few times.
There’s one exhibit I’ve always wanted to do: It’s this white square with a video wall that’s one pixel high. It’s fascinating how much information you can communicate with just a strip because people walking by have to put the picture together. As with a good ad, you want to put 90 percent of your communication out there and let the observant add 10 percent. That’s how you get someone to remember it.
Can attendees still do that with attention spans down to nanoseconds?
Yes, they can. And it’s because they’ve been bombarded with all this media for so long, oftentimes they’ll see it quicker.
Are you designing any new types of engagement or interactivity into your exhibits?
The wall we often run into is testing. We try to make [touch points] as bulletproof as possible but still, it doesn’t always work. As far as types of engagement, it always depends on the audience. At a contractor show, people are going to put their hands on stuff and play with it. We had an experience where we put a series of physical tests in a technology show and found that the audience didn’t engage—they wanted everything on a screen, or it wasn’t getting across. So, yes, tailoring engagement to the audience is crucial.
Your exhibits are often unique and unusual. What are some of the places you look for inspiration?
Inspiration can come from anywhere. I tend to avoid trade shows as inspiration for other trade shows because a new idea gets introduced and gets copied so fast and so thoroughly, the uniqueness evaporates.
I usually see exhibits as this confluence of architecture, technology, innovation, and even fine art. You can do things for three days you wouldn’t do if you had to have it up for a year. I actually get a lot of inspiration from fine art—Art Basel, Art Basel Miami. It also excites me to see places that are designed not for trade shows but, for example, fashion, and to hunt down new technologies and things that bring human delight.
Ideally, you let what you’re communicating guide your design. If you let the wow thing drive your communication, it never quite works.
If you could design anything, what would that be?
I had a great time designing car exhibits and did that for Volkswagen for three years. One of the things they were focused on was that we understood their message. It was critical. They took us to car shows in Europe to help us see how they wanted to be portrayed. On the other hand, every time I get that creative brief, that’s the best project that I could possibly have.
I get an adrenaline rush, and my absolute favorite part is over the next 24 to 72 hours, when my mind just goes into overdrive, trying out different things. A lot of exhibits will have seven, eight, or 10 designs. I distill it down. And it’s all brought on by a pretty dry concept, “We want to show that we’ve sold twice as many X this year.”
What would you consider the most underused tool in a designer’s toolbox now?
I came from the analog era. My degree is in graphics packaging. When it came to exhibits, we built physical models out of paper, cardboard, and plastic. The process required you to think about every aspect and by the time it was done, the design was really worked out. To this day, I often build models. It’s much faster now with a laser cutter and a Cricut printer, and you end up with something you put on a client’s desk. You can sort of do that three-dimensionally on a computer screen—and we do that occasionally— but I like to put my hands on it, and find it gives a client better results.
Another opportunity for designers is to get good at graphics. Mediocre graphics is the fastest way to destroy an exhibit design. Often we’ll design the graphics first and the exhibit to support it.
What are you excited about for the future of exhibits and environments?
I’m excited about the interaction between people and technology. I worked on packaging for the Macintosh computer when it was first introduced, so I had a front-row seat to all this technology and how it was developed and sold. I’m getting that feeling now with AI. Here’s this great tool we don’t quite know how to use yet, but you know it’s going to be something great.
This interview was edited for length and content. (Featured Image: Duncan Aviation)
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