For the EDPA Midwest Design Challenge: Caterpillar Booth Design, my group can be credited to Nicole Callahan, Azu Whigham, and myself. We were given the brief of creating a 20-foot by 20-foot booth that fulfills the company's want to showcase their solar panels while keeping their brand's look contact. Our group started by creating a moodboard with the look and feel we wanted for the booth. If you look to your right, we went with an electric and industrial look, incorporating greenery to make it feel more connected to the earth. Another thing we wanted to showcase was the actual company, so we pulled the large LED screen and giant letters from our moodboard into the exact design.
The next step in this challenge was to figure out the layout for the booth. After attending a tradeshow, we saw that most companies had a central point to their booth. Our group decided to keep that concept in our design so attendees would have a path to walk around and admire the solar panels in the middle. In our layout, the LED screen is pushed to the back so that the receptionist's desk can stand in front of the screen to welcome the viewers in.
As our design developed, the only problem we were running into was the flow of the booth. Therefore, the two meeting tables were moved to the side so the solar panels and controls would have more room, as they were the main focus of the booth. One more product we had to incorporate into our design was a sizeable banner-like company sign. We chose to go with a circular banner to see the booth from all angles. In this 3D version of our booth, you can see our group added a giant spherical light in the middle of the banner. This acted as the sun, giving the feeling that the solar panels were being powered.
We added all the materials and textures into our booth in our final render. Almost all of our surfaces have a concrete look, which nods to the industrial feeling we originally wanted. We used yellow lights to keep the electric feel and put greenery underneath the panels and on the sides of the LED screen to give the notion of being outdoors. One last concept we incorporated was the giant letters in front of the panels so that attendees would have some photo op to use and feel included. Our group and design were chosen as the winner of the proposed challenge for the Caterpillar Booth Design.