image Like we mentioned in the last post, PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas was our first ever Finji expo presence. Sony streamlined a lot of this process for us (providing some furniture, TVs, consoles, and some union stuff), but we were still responsible for populating the booth with banners and whatever else. I wanted to walk through the steps of how we did that in case it is useful for other small teams out there… Also just one last big public THANK YOU to Nathan Vella of Capy Games who walked us through this initially scary process! BANNERS We tried a couple of different options for banners. The biggest one, the one that looks like and functionally acts like a like third wall of the booth, is actually a set of 3 banners, printed in such a way that they line up and look like a single element. We ordered ours from a company called IM Photographics based out of New York, and the actual model/item number was “PM IM 1001 WM 60”, which you can find way down at the bottom of this page. We also ordered a backup banner, the long wide one you see hanging over the back of the booth. We got that printed at Staples for dirt cheap using their online pick-up-in-store option. We did the 8’ wide banner with grommets. The two banners together, with shipping, cost around $800. Total assembly time ended up being around 1-2 hours because of some printing errors on the banner wall, which we were mostly able to fix on-site. The Staples banner was an overnight print but the big banner wall took at least two weeks to print and ship. Nathan just reminded me: even though the up-front expense of the fancy retractable banners is quite high, you can ship them all over the place for less than $100, and re-use them a lot (they’re quite sturdy). You can also design them so that you can use only the central banner if you’re in a smaller space. See, this is why he is in charge of things! FURNITURE While Sony provided some perfectly adequate furniture, we wanted to try out some of the setup that Capy had at PAX last year, so we ordered some weird little ottomans and shelving units from Walmart (i know), and then took a cab out to pick them up and haul them back to the hotel, and then flagged them as charity items after the show. I think a lot of devs prefer to get their furniture from Ikea but there was none in the area. Friends also recommended seeking out local furniture artisans and offering to display their wares in the booth in exchange for having business cards out for their work, which is an idea I love and did not have time to pursue for this show. Our total furniture cost, including the cab ride, was probably around $300. Total assembly time, including loooong walks through the hotel, was maybe a few hours. We ordered these online approximately one week before the show and had them delivered to the local Walmart. Note: some shows do not let you donate your furniture to charity afterward, which sucks and is dumb. MERCH We had a few t-shirts and a lot of stickers and post cards at the booth. The stickers and cards were printed in Pittsburgh, at a local printer the NITW team trusts. We printed our shirts at Industry here in Austin, they did a great job on pretty short notice. The stickers and cards were under $100 I think, but the shirts, since there was a minimum order, were more like $400, and they were basically just uniforms/gifts, so we did not make anything back on them. These materials were all ordered and printed about one week before the show. MISC On Nathan’s suggestion we also printed some “TV toppers” at Insty Prints here in Austin. We used them for some GDC materials last March and they’ve been great to work with so far. ANYWAYS, TV toppers are those fancy cards that we stuck above and below the provided TVs. They included the game logo, the controls, and so on. We stuck them on with double-sided Velcro, and they cost maybe $50 or $100 to print. We printed them on a material called “coroplast”, which is a weird portmanteau of the words corrugated and plastic, but its just that weird kind of thickish, airy, plastic stuff of which small signs are often made. Turnaround time on those was maybe a week, and they were roughly 24" wide by 6" tall. VOILA I think that was about it. Including cab rides and lunch and stuff I think setup took around 8-10 hours, and including our t-shirts was still under $2000. That’s… a significant sum but compared to PAX I think we did pretty ok. Overall it was fun and pretty easy! That said, I would recommend dressing like a very, very comfortable slob on setup day. Skinny jeans were neither necessary nor practical!