Exhibition Design & Design Events

I have been an award winning exhibition stand designer and have extensive experience designing and project managing exhibition environments for a range of clients. Key projects include a Waterford Crystal stand for the Furniture & Lighting Showcase in the NEC Birmingham featuring the John Rocha Lighting Range; Kilkenny Tourism stand for Holiday World at the RDS Simmonscourt Dublin; NCAD's 250th Anniversary Exhibition Stand in Dublin Civic Offices; and a 'Waterford Designer Makers' stand for Waterford City & County Enterprise Boards at Showcase Ireland in the RDS. I have also organised a series of 'Design Week' exhibition events in Waterford city to help promote design in Ireland.

I was commisioned by Kilkenny Tourism to design their corporate exhibition stand for the Holiday World event at the RDS Simmonscourt, Dublin.

The main purpose of the exhibition stand at the show was to promote Kilkenny as a tourist destination for activity, cultural and relaxing holiday breaks. Designing exhibition stands is ulimately all about getting notices above the crowd of competing stands around you. We used a very rich colour pallete, a variety of styled lighting effects and furniture, along with visual references and physical tactile craft pieces to draw potential clients onto the stand. It worked very well.

Front view of the Kilkenny Tourism, Holiday World exhibition stand design

I was invited by the National College of Art and Design to design and co-ordinate the NCAD 250th Anniversary / Smurfit 'Design for Innovation' Exhibition at the Dublin Civic Offices. This exhibition event was a celebration of past-graduates of NCAD. It exhibited a wide ranging selection of their work from their professional careers as practicing designers in Ireland and around the world.

A bespoke custom built display scheme was designed to fit around the main ground floor concourse and artium space of the Dublin Civic Offices in order to house the wide range of exhibits being put on display.

The 'Design for Innovation' exhibition event expressed the diversity of professioanl careers that designers of NCAD went on to work in, designing products for all our everyday lives. The exhibits included crystal products, packaging design, consumer appliances and electronics, designer furniture homeware and lighting, commercial photography and multimedia, and much more.

NCAD 250th Anniversary / Smurfit 'Design for Innovation' Exhibition.

NCAD 250th Anniversary / Smurfit 'Design for Innovation' Exhibition

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland' exhibition official opening by our Mayor of Waterford, Cllr John Halligan

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland' exhibition and guest speaker event. This event was principally organised by Marcus Notley to promote the wide diversity of design talent in the South East Region of Ireland. The event exhibited professional work right across the design spectrum from fashion to garden design.

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland' exhibits

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland', guest speaker, Siobhan O'Dwyer of Threesixty talking to some of the audience about likely Future Consumer Design Trends

Our venue for the Design Week Waterford 'Designed in Ireland' exhibition event was the Waterford City Council Centre Library. It is a modern, vibrant and beautiful architecturally restored landmark in the centre of Waterford. And as we wanted to bring 'Design' to the people, it also has a brilliant footfall that represents a great social spectrum of the local community.

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland' exhibition and guest speaker event

Design Week Waterford, 'Designed in Ireland', lauch night

Design Week Waterford ‘Designed in Ireland', exhibition and guest speaker event at Waterford City Council Central Library. Conrado DeVelasco - Studio Conrado; Jane Cantwell - Waterford City Central Library; Marcus Notley - Marcus Notley Product Designers & Innovators; Ania Juraszek - MNPD&I; Cllr John Halligan - Mayor of Waterford; Siobhan O'Dwyer - Threesixty; Sean McNulty - Innovator.

'Waterford Designer Makers' exhibition stand which I designed for Waterford City & County Entreprise Boards for Showcase Ireland at the RDS Dublin. This stand brought together a number of local designer makers under the one 'Waterford Designer Makers' brand.

'Waterford Designer Makers' exhibition stand design.

During my time as a lighting designer at Waterford Crystal, I was always looking for new avenues to bring some fresh design thinking into the company. Traditionally, their lighting exhibition stands tended to put almost all their lighting product range on display, leaving the overall product display very congested and overcrowded. I designed a new Waterford Crystal Lighting stand for their International trade fairs, around a much more 'minimalism' art gallery approach. Showing only the best examples of each category of crystal lighting, and giving each piece space to be viewed in all its glory. Crystal lighting and chandelier orders doubled for the first time when this new stand was introduced.

The entired display background was constructed in a crisp smooth white glossy finish, along with using opaque glass display counter surfaces. The 'Waterford Lighting' logo was subtled recessed into the large wall panels.

The selectioned chandeliers were all hung at low levels, as that potential clients could see all the Waterford Crystal craftsmanship in detail

We called the single long display of crystal lamps the 'Catwalk'. The opaque glass surface helped to enhance the light and sparkle of all the crystal lamps.