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The Teddy Awards are held annually to honor the most creative and innovative displays designed worldwide from Nomadic products. Named in honor of Ted Zeigler, founder of Nomadic Display and inventor of the pop-up display, the Teddies are presented in seven categories, and have been a tradition for 17 years. The 2005 Teddy Awards winners come from all over the world and from many different industries. The winners of this year’s Teddy Awards, presented at a ceremony held during the Nomadic Display Distributors Meeting, March 15 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, all have several characteristics in common. All of the exhibits are versatile, modular, flexible and use strong graphics to create a dynamic brand image.
“Doing more with less is a reality in business today,” says Gwen Parsons, Senior Vice President of Nomadic Display. Exhibitors want cost-effective exhibits that are modular and can grow with them, as well as be repurposed for smaller shows and events. Yet they are not willing to sacrifice design or image.
Parsons says this year’s Teddy Awards winners show that Nomadic Display and its distributors worldwide have risen to meet the call by becoming experts at designing best-of-all-worlds solutions for their clients. “The creativity is amazing,” says Parsons. “The designs get more exciting every year.”

Disney Theatrical Productions
Disney Theatrical Productions had been using a 10X10 exhibit for years. Promoting group sales of its award-winning shows, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” often entails participating in tourism expos and events in Boston, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, and other cities where Disney Theatrical Productions has its theatrical performances. When a new vice president came on board, the decision was made to “step it up a notch,” says Eric Bonam, a Display Consultant at Nomadic Display New York. “Disney asked us to create a new, bolder 10X20 environment that would help drive bookings,” says Bonam.
Disney selected a Nomadic DesignLine kit they saw in the Nomadic Display New York showroom as a starting point. From there, the Nomadic team worked to adapt and customize the exhibit for Disney. Additions included a raised floor and theatrical lighting. “We wanted to make the exhibit as theatrical as possible,” says Bonam. The backwall was a hybrid display that combined a Nomadic Instand pop-up with Nomadic Platinum panels and aluminum extrusion. The result was a combination of stunning graphics with stretch fabric panels set on an arc to create a small conference area. Accessorized with a plasma monitor for DVD, directors chairs and curvilinear header, the design became uniquely Disney. As a finishing touch, Nomadic devised an optional header mounted on 2-foot pole extensions. When allowed to go to a 10’ height this enables Disney to add-on the header in a matter of minutes. Also, the Instand backwall can be used as a stand alone display in a 100 square foot space.
Bonam reports that the result has been a substantial increase in the number of leads per show. Bonam says, “Disney told us this design has definitely been worth the investment.”

Mississippi Polymer Technologies
When Synergy Design Group received a call from Mississippi Polymer Technologies, Inc., the team rose to the challenge. Mississippi Polymer was launching a new product and company—Parmax. It needed a new exhibit that would stand out on the show floor and reflect the spin-off company’s high tech image. What the company got was that and more—a Teddy Award-winning exhibit.
Toni Tagliabovore, the Marketing Communications Manager at Mississippi Polymer started her search for a new exhibit on the Web. She found an exhibit she liked on the Nomadic Display web site, and through the site, was directed to Synergy, her local Nomadic Display distributor.
Creating the exhibit entailed collaboration and brainstorming between Mississippi Polymer, its agency and the team at Synergy. “I gave them lots of information about our company and product and asked them to put a concept together for us,” says Tagliabovore.
Synergy connected a curved Instand pop-up with front mounted graphics to a SpaceStrut space frame with back mounted sheer tension fabric graphics. Then Synergy designed new graphics. Drawing from Mississippi Polymer’s corporate identity the new graphic incorporated the company’s blue color scheme and hexagonal shaped logo.
The result was “A clean, clear, powerful image,” says Tagliabovore. She says the exhibit functions well, standing out at shows and enticing people to stop. In addition, she says the exhibit is extremely easy to work with—taking a single person less than an hour to complete the entire 10x20 setup. Also the exhibit can be split into two separate 10’x10’ exhibits, enabling the exhibit to be in two places at one time if necessary.

Medinotes Corporation
Medinotes is an Iowa-based company whose software enables physicians to take their notes electronically. Since 1995 the company has grown from an idea thrown around by two seat-mates that met on an airplane, to a corporation with over 70 employees. Along the way, the company has relied on Brainstorm Marketing, its local Nomadic Display distributor, to help it grow from a tabletop exhibit to a 20x20 island exhibit.
“We get a lot of leads through shows and sales at shows,” says Don Schoen, CEO of Medinotes. Brainstorm Marketing has helped, designing cost-effective exhibits that reuse components from the previous configuration while helping take the company to the next level.
Medinotes’ latest exhibit uses the Instand pop-up frames from its previous 10’x 20’ inline exhibit, and pairs them with new graphics and truss to create what Schoen calls, “A nice, professional look.” The addition of two projection screens and workstations provides the perfect environment to demonstrate Medinotes’ product.
Another benefit of the exhibit is the exhibit’s height which places Medinotes’ identity above the 8’high walls of surrounding exhibits. “At 14 feet high, people can see our exhibit from quite a ways away,” says Schoen.
Schoen says he is pleased that the exhibit has held up well. And should his messaging change, he will simply revise his graphics. “Nomadic enables us to make changes at a reasonable cost,” he says.

Nomadic Display is a producer of portable and modular exhibit systems with manufacturing facilities in suburban Washington, DC and Ireland. To learn more, visit nomadicdisplay.com.

Thomas Argon is an Orlando-based freelance writer.