TradeToons™ News

At TradeToons™ we are passionate about live digital caricatures and the unique power it has to connect people in business. Here are some articles highlighting the practical value of this art form at trade shows.

The Power of Live Digital Cartoon Portraiture

April 17, 2019 – By TradeToons™

Live digital caricatures have changed the nature of cartoon portraits. Caricaturing has historically been a street art form with no deeper purpose than fun and whimsy. The goal was simply a laugh in exchange for a few bucks toward a starving artist’s rent money. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see a caricaturist peddling sketches on a boardwalk, along the beach, or at your local county fair.

Celebrity caricatures line the walls of countless Los Angeles and New York City restaurants. Street artists in places like New Orleans, Niagara Falls, and Times Square set up right on the sidewalk. And, of course, political caricatures of kings (and now presidents) go back to the time of Caesar. Even Monet got his start scribbling caricatures on the streets of Paris.

It has only been recently that companies and businesses have begun harnessing the power of “street style” caricatures as a practical business tool. So what is it about live digital caricatures specifically that is so special in this regard?

There are several things unique to the live digital caricature art form that make it especially suited for a business entertainment at trade shows and industry conventions that have authentic and valuable business connections as a primary goal:

1. Caricatures are highly personal. Every face is unique, so a caricature with a good likeness is like a fingerprint, personalized for the subject.

2. It is a fascinating entertainment. Watching a talented caricature artist work is mesmerizing. For whatever reason, people love to watch a caricature being drawn.

3. Street style caricatures are fast. Watching an artist paint a detailed portrait would be like watching paint dry, literally. It takes forever. But a quality “street style” caricature comes together in a matter of minutes, right before one’s eyes, providing a very satisfying experience to the viewer.

4. Digital caricatures enhance the entertainment experience significantly. The magic combination of a drawing coming to life on an iPad Pro that is mirrored on a big HD screen opens up the entertainment to many more people who can now watch from a distance without needing to crowd in close around the artist.

5. Digital prints allow for immediate enjoyment of a physical sketch as well as an opportunity for the client to put their logo on an object much more likely to be held onto as a keepsake than, say, a pen or mug.

6. Digital downloads prevent any image from ever being lost, and clients can keep all of the drawings produced during their event, creating an additional point of contact between the client and the subject (who may be a future client, important decision maker in the industry or even a buyer).

When compared to other giveaways and entertainments, caricatures are virtually unmatched in their ability to quickly and efficiently deliver a totally personalized trade show giveaway (ergo, less likely to be tossed in the trash) with purpose. As the caricature is being drawn and as future clientele are waiting in line, your company’s trade show attendants have the unique opportunity to engage future buyers in a meaningful way.

Top Five Trade Show Destination Cities

March 9, 2019 – By TradeToons™

At TradeToons™, we travel to trade shows and industry conventions all over the United States sketching up snazzy digital caricatures for our remarkable clients. It’s all about helping our clients create authentic personal connections and spread the word about their amazing products and services. In all our years of drawing cartoon portraits live at corporate events, we’ve learned a thing or three about what makes for a great destination city and what … well … doesn’t.

As much as most cities crave the economic adrenaline shot of a huge corporate event rolling into town, only a handful of destinations really have what it takes to make the experience excellent not just for the city’s bottom line, but for the visitors themselves. Sadly, not all cities are created equal when it comes to hosting a massive influx of very temporary residents.

So without further ado, here’s our list of what we truly believe are the top five best cities for trade shows. These select metropolises manage to find that delicate balance when it comes to offering destination appeal, dining, hospitality, entertainment value, significant trade show venue space, and an infrastructure designed to handle a constant flow of hundreds of thousands of tourists year round:

1. Las Vegas – We’d be fooling ourselves if we didn’t put Sin City at the top of our list. Nevada has more trade show floor space than any other state, and it’s no doubt that the sparkling neon wonderland is a big part of the reason why. Sure gambling is a draw, but it’s only a drop in the bucket for a city like Vegas. With world class magicians, musicians, restaurants, casinos, hotels—and let’s not forget those incredible buffets!—Vegas has it all.

2. Chicago – For many national industries, Chicago is a no-brainer host city for conventions and trade shows. This is especially true for companies with a true nationwide presence that requires a venue that is both practical (i.e. central) and worthy of a visit. As the third biggest metropolis in the United States, Chicago comes with everything you’d come to expect from a world class city, from dining to hotels to entertainment. But for industry trade shows, the Windy City’s big draw is its location in the heart of the midwest right on beautiful Lake Michigan.

3. New York City – If only the Big Apple was more centrally located, it would easily top this list. But even with its inherent travel inconvenience for Pacific-coasters, Manhattan still has to be in the top five cities for trade shows and industry conventions. Perhaps nowhere on Earth can compete with NYC when it comes to selection and diversity of anything and everything the heart could desire. From museums to night life to Broadway to the Halal (Oh, the Halal. If you haven’t had it, you have to try it!), New York is the perfect backdrop for any trade show or industry convention.

4. Orlando – Orlando has more to offer than fairy tale castles and Mickey Mouse ears these days. It’s a veritable playground for everyone from tikes to seniors with an economy and infrastructure built entirely around pleasing a massive and constant influx of one-week residents. With vast fields of trade show floor space, year-round lovely weather and the biggest concentration of theme parks in the world, Orlando is an ideal destination for trade show attendees looking for good old fashioned American fun and palm trees to boot.

5. New Orleans – Amazing creole, jazz, history, beautiful weather, night life—did I mention the creole??—New Orleans is hard to beat when it comes to offering a place for the after hours when trade show visitors are anxious to get off the trade show floor and out on the town. Truly a destination for those looking for rich cultural experiences paired with amazing cuisine and music. Try the crawfish. Just not at lunch if you’re heading back to the trade show floor.

Top Five Most Inspiring Trade Show Booth Design Companies

February 19, 2018 – By TradeToons™

As much as we at TradeToons™ hate to admit it, having a booth that stands out from the stiff competition on the trade room floor takes a little more than simply hiring TradeToons™ to draw live digital caricatures. While what we do can enhance your appeal, beautiful, eye-popping design and crystal clear messaging are the rules of the game when it comes to generating successful connections within your trade show booth.

Only when these basics are met will a trade show booth really be able to benefit from the added fun factor and practical/personal draw of digital cartoon portraits drawn on an iPad Pro. (We consider live digital caricatures as an added value that enhances the already positive experience that a well-designed and well-staffed trade show booth offers in B2B, face-to-face marketing.)

First, a good trade show booth should have a few key things going for it:

• Your trade show booth should be easy to see from a distance. This means beautiful and clear on-brand coloration. It also means that a large hanging ceiling display high above the trade show booth footprint is absolutely key. This allows guests to locate you from many angles on the trade room floor which can feel like a maze to navigate.

• Your trade show booth must be beautiful and easily comprehensible. Beautiful corporate design and simple, on-message marketing materials with a clear takeaway is essential. This means putting the time and money into hiring a profession ad agency or PR/Marketing firm to take the reins and make it amazing. Large companies can sometimes get away with using an internal marketing department, but often fresh outside eyes are essential to making it truly special.

• Something unique, something unforgettable. This could be a remarkably well-shot video loop with high production values. Or this might mean a digital lounge space or built-in ice-cream parlor. It might mean craft beer on draft. It could mean any number of things, but the main thing is that it must be something different than what everyone else is doing. There’s nothing duller than a table with some business cards spread out.

Here are our five favorite trade show exhibit designers that all truly exemplify how to make a trade show exhibit exceptional:

1. IGE Group – We chose IGE as number one because of their unique ability to master the look and feel of a brand and transform that into an architectural space. Whether it’s a famous tooth paste brand or an international automobile manufacturer, IGE’s designs make one feel as though they are stepping into the “world of a brand”. One look at their portfolio and it’s clear that IGE has elevated trade show booth development and design to a true art form. The beautiful color combinations and elegant designs are first-in-class. Check out their work here.

2. Absolute Exhibits – Absolute Exhibits designs stood out from the pack in part due to their creative way of integrating engaging art installations into the design of their trade show booths. Especially cool was the glowing, cubic fountain centerpiece seen in some of their designs. Much like the lobby of a nice hotel, the little splashes of beauty and whimsical detail are important to make a space feel warm and welcoming. Absolute Exhibits excels at this. Check out their stuff here.

3. ExpoMarketing – Located in Southern California, ExpoMarketing is an award-winning exhibit design and fabrication house creating unforgettable brand experiences and relationships on the trade show floor. We at TradeToons™ agree that the experience and relationships must go hand-in-hand (literally). ExpoMarketing has been creating amazing trade show booth displays since 1991. Their main offices are in Tustin, California. Check out their amazing portfolio page, if you want to get truly inspired.

4. Skyline – Skyline creates and designs some incredible fully custom trade show booths that are built to attract real attention. They are passionate about the power of face-to-face marketing and convinced that it has never been more important than it is today in our very digital age. For inspiration, check out some of their major corporate trade show booth samples here.

5. Nimlok – Nimlok offers an array of well-designed trade show exhibits ranging from simple to very complex. Since they offer such a range of styles for a variety of budgets, Nimlok is a good solution for companies of all sizes. Their examples serve as inspiration for big corporations with sizable budgets and small companies looking to make a modest splash on the trade room floor. Check out their cool portfolio here.

Zippy Cartoon Portraits Via the iPad

November 15, 2018 – By TradeToons™

The ability to draw digitally goes back to the early nineties, but it hasn’t been until recently, with the advent of the iPad Pro, that caricatures have really come to be a practical digital art form. There are several advantages that caricatures drawn on the iPad have over traditional marker-on-paper drawings seen at amusement parks and festivals.

The primary advantage that live digital caricatures drawn on the iPad Pro have over traditional caricatures is speed. Why? This has everything to do with the coloring process. The two traditional physical mediums for coloring marker-on-paper drawings are airbrush and colored pencils. Air brush requires large and heavy equipment, tons of messy paints and a special easel to be functional. It also takes twice as long as digital coloring. Colored pencil coloring takes even longer. Digital coloring processes, on the other hand, allow the artist to mop in gorgeous color at a rapid pace allowing her to arrive at a finished digital drawing much faster than a traditional caricature.

Another advantage that digital caricatures have is the significant enhancement of the entertainment experience of caricatures. The ability to mirror the drawing being created onto a big HD screen (your TradeToons™ live digital caricature artists bring all necessary equipment). This opens up the entertainment to a much wider audience of people waiting in line and passersby, while the entertainment value of traditional caricatures is limited to those huddled around the artist.

Still another advantage is the ability to digitally store and reproduce digital content easily. When a client hires an artist to do traditional caricatures, there is no record of each drawing and all the original sketches walk away with the subjects of each drawing. With live digital caricatures, not only does each subject get to walk away with their printed drawing, but they are also able to download it, print it out at a bigger size, or just to have their own digital copy. Beyond that, the company who hired the digital caricaturist gets to keep each and every drawing created. This allows for yet another opportunity for clients to interact with members of their key market when contacted for info on how to download the drawing.

Most importantly, the simple incorporation of a digital logo into the live digital caricature is extremely valuable. The company hiring a TradeToons™ digital caricaturist has complete power over the logo and messaging included in each drawing. This can be used to artfully add a message point or promotion to each sketch.

The Psychology of Trade Show Live Digital Caricatures

August 3, 2018 – By TradeToons™

There aren’t many trade show booth entertainments that attract potential clientele quite like live digital caricatures. This digital art form is just engaging enough and just low-key enough to convert many more would-be passersby into bemused watchers than most giveaways or looped videos are capable of. Our theory is that the psychology of this is natural to most, if not all, people, but that digital caricatures specifically enhance this natural response via employment of a big screen monitor.

Imagine you are walking along in a city park on a nice day and you see an artist drawing a portrait or caricature. The natural response is to slow down and take a look, see if it really looks like the person being sketched. The trouble is, with traditional art, the viewer is limited by the size of the paper which is often obstructed by the hunched body of the artist as she works. And, if there are others watching already, it can be difficult or awkward to even take a quick glance without rubbernecking over the artist’s shoulder.

Live digital caricaturing, with the paired use of a large mirrored HD monitor, solves this problem. The big screen allows the passerby to stop and watch the drawing in progress from a comfortable distance, which often keeps them hypnotized for a minute or two. Many who stop end up just naturally getting into line to get one themselves, while others simply stand nearby and watch for a while. Either way, this opens up a natural opportunity for trade show booth reps to engage those who are watching, who otherwise would have just breezed right on by.

The truth is, while there is a nice business buzz and excitement in the air at trade shows, there’s also lots of downtime which can get boring for anyone. Live digital caricatures from TradeToons™ really help to break up the humdrum day with something fun of interest occurring at your booth. Who knows, the person watching the caricatures being drawn or the person being drawn might end up becoming a valuable business partner worth thousands of dollars in future revenue. And all it took to earn it was a simple and personal form of trade show entertainment to draw them in.

The Balance Between Quality & Quantity

May 4, 2018 – By TradeToons™

May the Fourth be with you, Star Wars aficionados!

At TradeToons™, we have a philosophy about the value of this unique art form, and how that value can be maximized. We believe it is all about finding that delicate balance between quality and quantity. Some live digital caricature companies are obsessed with pushing out volume as rapidly as possible, and, while TradeToons™ artists are just as capable of drawing rapidly, we find that the best way to maximize the value of the digital caricature experience is to find a good balance where quality is not sacrificed on the alter of speed.

Exceptionally fast digital caricatures usually have one thing in common: they look very generic. A five minute caricature has the tendency to look like someone slammed down a rubber stamp of a generic cartoon face and then scribbled different hair on it to make it sort of look like the person being drawn. At TradeToons™, while we realize that speed is part of the magic of live digital caricatures, we also realize that there is a limit to how fast a human being should draw while maintaining the quality that people expect when watching a funny cartoon drawing come to life.

From our experience of drawing professionally for two decades, we feel that the completion of a color digital face in the 8-10 minute window provides the maximal balance of quality and quantity, whereby each person is getting a truly quality drawing and still a large volume of people can be worked through in a typical 8-hour trade show day.

This emerges from our philosophy that the trade show value of live digital caricatures arises from its entertainment value more than its giveaway value. While the giveaway aspect of TradeToons™ caricatures is key, the entertainment factor is the main way that authentic opportunities for real connection to future clientele, industry decision makers and partners is achieved. So for us, it really is about nether quantity nor quality. It’s about both and finding the right balance between them based on demand as the day unfolds on the trade show floor.

A Practical Trade Show Application of Live Digital Caricatures

September 12, 2016 – By TradeToons™ – Special Thanks to “Caricatures By Brad” for this helpful article.

The article below is courtesy of “Caricatures By Brad”. For more information visit www.caricaturesbybrad.com.

Most people consider caricatures more whimsical than practical. As beloved as the art form is by those who appreciate an exaggerated portrait, it isn't exactly an integral part of most business plans. Few think a caricature might help land the next big deal, and most business-minded folks consider it a simple amusement that belongs on family trips to the theme park, nowhere near the corporate conference room. 

This thinking is rapidly changing, however, as a growing number of businesses are taking advantage of this unique service in a truly practical business application in the corporate world. Live digital caricatures, specifically those performed on-site at trade shows and industry conventions, are becoming increasingly popular as a practical service for generating draw to brand messaging, products, and services displayed in trade show booths and exhibits. 

While it may be difficult to see the practical value of this at first glance, it's difficult to deny once examined. Due to its unique nature, this practical application is also arguably superior to many of the other self-promotional goods and giveaways that corporations and brands routinely spend healthy budgets on when trying to gain attention from prospective customers at B2B events. 

According to the 2012 study "The Economic Significance of Meetings to the U.S. Economy" published by PricewaterhousCoopers LLP, there were 273,700 industry conventions and 10,900 trade shows in the United States alone in 2012. The trade show and convention industry is undoubtedly a necessary part of the fabric of B2B commerce in the world, so it's no wonder that so much money is spent preparing for these events: $280 billion dollars spent in direct spending related to corporate functions in 2012 alone. 

B2B is difficult because unlike direct-to-consumer marketing, businesses are harder to advertise to by traditional means. This is why trade shows are so vital. At trade shows, corporations and brands are able to erect temporary storefronts on the trade show floor allowing them to network with their prospects like traditional face-to-face customers. But gaining attention for more than a few seconds can be daunting with a showroom full of competition all vying for your prospect's attention. That's why nearly all booths and exhibits provide some form of giveaway to help draw in guests for a longer chat. 

Common giveaways are mugs, keychains, t-shirts, USB drives, pens and the like. Occasionally, businesses get a little more creative, offering something more exotic like a free back massage. The challenge is finding something that 1) creates real draw to a trade show booth, 2) advertises for the brand, 3) creates a real opportunity for customer engagement (i.e., time), and 4) is personalized enough to create real impact. Live digital caricatures are one of a few services that actually meet all of these criteria.

So what exactly are live digital caricatures? Like traditional marker-on-paper caricatures, digital caricatures are drawn on location by hand. The difference is that digital caricatures are drawn on a digital tablet and displayed on one or more large screen monitors. The large screens both entertain passersby and pull people in who want a caricature. This allows real, natural engagement to occur between the person being sketched and the booth attendants representing the sponsoring brand. Also, those waiting in line are engaging the brand to and creating networking opportunities. 

After the sketch is completed, it is printed out and often provided to the guest as a name tag lanyard which the guest wears for the duration of the convention. Guests become voluntary walking advertisements for the sponsoring brand since a full color logo is included on every sketch. Unlike nearly every other giveaway, sponsoring brands get a bang for the buck at several key stages of customer engagement while creating a growing awareness of their brand.

For brands looking for a good way to create draw to their trade show booths, engage prospects once there, and leave them with a giveaway unlikely to end up in the trash, live digital caricatures may be something for companies to consider.

A Special Thanks to “Caricatures By Brad” for article. For more information about “Caricatures By Brad”, visit www.caricaturesbybrad.com.