On Business: Booth Setup

Heroes Con was this past weekend and, while I wasn't able to attend, I did have a number of friends and acquaintences who did. One of them was Greg Cravens, the artist/writer behind The Buckets and Hubris, who set up a booth at the show...

I don't know if Cravens read one of my previous posts on booth set-ups, but he's doing a lot of things really well here, and I want to highlight them for others.

First, he's got the name of his strip promoted really well. It shows up very prominently in three different places so a visitor can see it from across the room, right at the table looking up, and a little away from the table looking down. Not only is the name easily visible, but the website address is right there each time. And he incoporates the title character differently in each place as well. But the really clever bit, I think, is that the three figures, when viewed from top to bottom, become a sort of comic in an of themselves. Hubris launches off the cliff, starts falling off the bike, and eventually crashes down below. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but it makes for a fantastic effect.

Next, he's got a full backdrop behind him with the comic's name/URL at the top. If you take a picture of Cravens while he's sitting or standing at the booth, you will almost certainly get him surrounded by his actual comic strips with the identity of same just above his head. Plus it eliminates the extra garbage in the background from people wandering around in the next aisle.

The custom table cloth works well by, again, repeating the comics' URL, but it also helps to differentiate it from the other neutral table cloths on the tables on either side of him. People know very clearly where Cravens' booth starts and stops. Cravens has his "territory" clearly marked, so much so that you can barely notice that he's actually sharing some of his booth space with Charles Ettinger!

On the left and right sides of the booth, right at eye level, are price sheets. The table has stand-up displays for books and other merchandise. And there are free stickers right in front to remember him by after you get several aisles over.

I haven't talked to Cravens since the show ended to see how well it went for him, but I suspect he did pretty well for himself. He's got a great-looking booth to attract attention, and some good material to keep people interested once they get there. This is how you do convention booths in an Artists Alley, people!

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