5 tips: Planning an art fair booth
There are a few steps I always follow when planning an art fair booth. I hope this helps you plan your walls!
Organize artwork to bring
It’s very important to make a plan before arriving at an art fair to set up.
When I set out to plan a booth, I first make a folder showing with all of the confirmed artwork sizes.
Even better: plan artwork sizes and themes for a booth well in advance, so that you arrange canvas sizes appropriately to fit. Lay out the booth and buy canvases that will fit your layout.
2. Get artwork online
Now that you’re organized, you will want to upload the new images to your website, or Square app if you are using it for POS. Ensure the folder of images is also on your phone to help with social media posts, or put them in a social media planner (I use Later).
Consider doing an online presale that you’ll send to your mailing list subscribers. This is a great way to encourage early sales from your devoted followers.
3. Map it out
There are many ways to draw out a booth, here are the ways I’ve used:
Artplacer desktop app using their art booth feature, wonderful for showing correct size.
Use Google sheets (or other spreadsheet software) to create 1’x1’ cells in your table to map out sizing.
Create rectangular squares in Canva and upload images there (you’ll have to scale them to size)
Use Adobe illustrator or other Adobe programs to lay out
Print images and cut out, or use coloured paper to lay out on graph paper measured to size.
Remember to include booth signage and furniture that you intend to bring.
It doesn’t have to be fancy! This cut & paste plan for Lisa Free turned into the attractive booth shown here:
Lisa Free TAP 2020 booth
Kara McIntosh PDF booth designed for TAP 2019
Lisa Free booth designed in ArtPlacer for TAP 2022
4. Arranging artwork
Hanging an art fair booth is all about making groupings of artwork that “speak” to one another. This becomes a skill honed over time, but consider starting with artwork groupings that have the same colour palette, style or concept exhibited. Design-wise, we look for groupings that are the same size: artworks with same heights can hang side-by-side nicely, while artwork of same width can be stacked vertically. An art fair booth should be hung sparingly, like a gallery. Salon-style over-hanging is not appreciated in contemporary art fairs.
Tip: you may want to consider not bringing long horizontal artwork, as it takes up so much wall space. 3 vertical pieces might better use the same space and offer more choice for your viewers.
5. Bring furniture to store things
You are welcome to add a piece of furniture to your booth, so why not make it functional? A console table, bench or media console can be extremely helpful. Here are some things that I like to store in my art fair booth:
water bottle/snacks
extra art labels
painter’s tape and a sharpie for writing SOLD names on the back of artwork
bubble wrap/tape for wrapping sold artwork
a few extra small pieces to pull out and show people
red dots for sales, blue dots for holds
purse/phone/notebook
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