Helping your audience know where they are, where to go, and what they are looking at is key to their happiness. Several levels of signage are really important to pre-think, design, produce, and install.
HINT: Remember that in crowded areas, signage will get lost unless it is positioned above eye-level. Plan accordingly!
Directional (inside event): Orient your visitors. Walk through the site as if you had never been there before and sign accordingly. Sign the basics:
You also have an opportunity to help people navigate your content (and have a little fun):
HINT: Someone at Maker Faire came up with this simple, old-fashioned directional wooden sign system that is cheap to produce, quick to label, and in keeping with the DIY spirit. You can also use them year to year.
Maker Identification: Maker Faire generates an 11 x 17” laminated poster for each maker. It is comprised of information gathered in the maker application (maker name, title of exhibit, description and an image). These not only help attendees understand what they are seeing, but also help the makers locate their space.
Maker Faire generates these signs from a database created from that maker application info. We are trying to figure out a cheap and easy way of replicating this, but at this time it seems like automating this is for the high-tech crowd!
Maker ID signs template creates visual branding consistency and also helps your visitors “read” the event.
Exit: Our fire inspector wanted exit signs with directional arrows posted everywhere. We created one 8.5 x 11” EXIT sign, and a separate 8.5 x 11” arrow. Then we could post appropriately as we walked the site.
HINT: Plastic sheet covers (vs. laminating) can be a low-cost way of keeping these simple signs free of moisture for the duration of the event.
Banners: Your Mini Maker Faire logo looks fabulous! Big banner logo signs (with grommets for rigging and slices for wind ventilation) posted at your entrance and as your stage backdrop give great bang for the buck.
HINT: It’s comforting to enlist a solid operations tech with some rigging experience to hang signs.
Sponsor: Depending on your sponsorship agreements, you might want to feature hanging or standing signage of sponsors in addition to (or in place of) a booth presence.
Parking and Other Exterior Signage: Think through how traffic will move to your event. Assign someone to focus on the placement of directional street signage so as to minimize confusion and get people inside your Faire as quickly and easily as possible.
HINT: Realtor open house A-frame signs can be covered with directional arrows for parking and entrance street signs.
Tents
Makers sometimes use tents (usually “Pop-Up” tents) to demarcate space and hang signage from. They also protect from light weather, and intense sunshine. These tents generally have a 10’x10’ footprint. However, Pop-Up tents are hazardous if even the slightest amount of wind picks up. They turn into giant, dangerous kites that will take flight even in tied-together groups.
Watch weather forecasts, and if there is even the slightest chance of wind, we advise you weight each leg of each tent. You can message your makers to ask them to be sure to weight their tents, but ultimately the responsibility to keep your attendees safe lies with you, the event producer. Plan accordingly: buy/gather the weight materials and assign a team to ensuring every tent is weighted properly.
How to weight them? Since we had a playground with sand we could borrow, we bought cheap empty sand bags from Home Depot and had a team fill them up, wheelbarrow them around, and tie them down with rope.
Giant tents—like 100’ long tents that create indoor space—are hugely expensive (thousands of dollars for each day) and likely out of your budget. Also, in our county, permits pulled at least 7 days in advance are required to erect big event tents. If you are still interested, Google “tent event rental” for your area.
Power
Number one thing about electricity is that you definitely will want to identify or hire an electrician to help you spec out your equipment needs and to layout the power distribution at your event.
Be sure to ask how many “amps” (amperes) are available for distribution when you rent your venue. Also ask your makers how many amps they require on their maker application. Most will say 5 amps. Some might need 10 or even 20. Your stage might need 20 or 30 amps. Some special maker exhibits featuring electricity could ask for 220 volts or even three-phase power; forward these requests to your electrician.
Once you have a layout and a site map, you can label or color-code each maker space with the number of amps each space requires. Sometimes you will choose to shift your maker space assignments to balance power loads, or to eliminate unnecessary long power runs for just one maker.
HINT: volts x amps = watts. This is a GREAT equation to remember when you’re producing an event. In the U.S., most power is 110 volts (though electric dryers typically need 220 volts). An average household circuit is 15 or 20 amps. Most consumer electronic devices have a little label on them that will tell you how many watts or amps they draw. If you know two of these three numbers in this equation, you can figure out the third. For example: if you have a stage light that is using a 500 watt bulb, and you know you are on 110 volt power or circuit, you can plug those into that equation and know that light will need about 4.5 amps. And if that light is on a 20 amp circuit, you can only add 3 more of those same lamps before you risk tripping that circuit breaker.
Internet
Ask your makers on their application if they will need Internet access. You can also choose to ask if they will need a “wired” or Ethernet cable drop, or if WIFI is sufficient. (Very few if zero will need an actual Ethernet cable drop, and if they ask for it, double-check to see that they really need it.) Find out from your venue what kind of internet network is available, and what passwords are needed to distribute it.
If the venue claims to have a network, test it! Use a speed test tool like
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/, and check the number of bars and speed of page loads with a mobile laptop in every conceivable corner of your venue. You do not want to be trouble-shooting internet access at the last minute.
You may find you don’t have enough signal and choose to install your own temporary network, or add repeaters to extend the existing network. If this is the case, you will want to designate or hire an Internet network person and rent the necessary gear.
HINT: You do not want an open WIFI network at your event—your visitors will overwhelm it with cell phone data requests and your makers will be out of luck. Make sure it is password protected, and that your makers who need the connection and your lead staff know the password.
