BEMIDJI—BSU student Hannah Sernett didn’t know what to expect when she signed up for an “Designing for International Exhibitions” course in the 2016 fall semester.
The main assignment was to create a design for a booth to be used by Exhibit Designers and Producers Association (EDPA) at EuroShop 2017.
The design competition provides the winner with paid trip to EuroShop, Europe’s largest exhibit and retail design trade show, which will be held March 5-9 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Hannah Sernett winning both design to be used by Exhibit Designers and Producers Association at EuroShop 2017.
“I had no intentions or no thoughts that I would be close to winning because all 15 BSU students in that class are really, really good designers,” said Sernett, a BSU senior from Shakopee, Minn.
Not only did her win earn her the trip to Germany, but EDPA will be building Sernett’s design for their booth at EuroShop.
“What we do can get kind of conceptual, but when you can see something that you have created through a drawing and then on the computer to actually being able to walk through it and experience that space, it’s a really cool feeling,” said Sachel Josefson, assistant professor of Exhibit Design at BSU.
This is the second time that the EDPA has sponsored the competition to design its booth, and BSU students have won both contests. Danika Stelton, a 2014 BSU graduate won the first competition in 2013.
Only students from BSU, which has the only undergraduate exhibit design program in the U.S., and the Fashion Institute of Technology, a graduate-level design program in New York City participated in the contest.
During the BSU course, the class began by learning about the differences in between trade show exhibits in North America and Europe.
“We had probably about 10 to 12 different guest speakers. They either flew in from around the country or they skyped in via telepresence,” said Josefson.
Sernett was able to apply these concepts to her design.
“(The) United States is more in and out. Europe is hospitality-based, like the chairs change. Sometimes in the United States, there aren’t any chairs in some of them because it’s a two-minute thing. You walk in, kind of view the stuff and walk out. For EDPA, they wanted it to be somewhere that somebody (could) come in and sit down for half an hour or longer periods of time,” Sernett.
Sernett’s winning design features a central seating lounge with a large television, a meeting room on the left and the reception area and kitchenette on the right. Booth’s walls with feature a geometric pattern reflecting colors found in EDPA’s logo.
“The EDPA (logo) has green, blue, yellow, and burnt orange. Those four colors and then I kind of made them fading into each other with different triangles. So that is like my style, and so I threw that into there,” Sernett said.
Sernett will not be only BSU student attending EuroShop, as Josefson and 15 students will be attending as well.
“EuroShop is viewed in the industry as being the event that sets the tone for trends for the next three years and so every company in the kind of event industry wants to send their designers,” Josefson said, “Having students that have attended this event provides them with an incredible learning experience that will equip them to get a job when they leave.”