By the Exhibition Stall Design editorial team · Updated 1 October 2026 · 9 min read
Short answer
To brief AV & LED wall support accurately, answer thirteen questions on one page — the venue and the surface or screen size, the load-in and show dates, the show pattern, the available power and rigging, the goal with a figure attached, the audience, what is being shown, the content plan, the redundancy you want, a budget range and the approval chain — and send the identical text to every supplier. That is what makes two quotes comparable.
Key takeaways
- Send the identical brief to every supplier. Quotes are only comparable if they answer the same question.
- State one primary goal with a number attached. "Build brand awareness" and "book 40 distributor meetings" produce two completely different results at the same cost.
- Share the budget as a range. A supplier who does not know the band will either over-design and lose your week, or under-design and lose the show.
- Every blank field becomes an assumption, and every assumption is priced for the worst case. That is the whole argument for filling it in.
- Surface or screen size and the number of runs do more to the price than any creative decision. The crew bill often exceeds the hardware bill.
- Name the approver and the decision date. The real timeline is usually your sign-off chain, not the workshop.
What a good brief is actually worth
A spread of quotes is usually read as a spread of competence. It is far more often a spread of guesses. Fix the dimensions, the dates, the specification and the outcome and competent suppliers converge; leave those open and each one fills the blanks differently, which is exactly what produces three prices that cannot be reconciled.
That matters commercially. Event managers, corporate communication teams and agencies running conferences, launches, dealer meets and public shows, and the complaint that follows a bad procurement round is almost always the same: the quotes were not comparable. They were not comparable because the brief did not fix the variables. For AV & LED wall support the variables that move the price most are show duration and number of event days, equipment size and specification (screen size, projector brightness or drone count) and content creation and programming time — and all of them are things only you can state.
Then there is the schedule. Every missing field is a round trip, and round trips happen at the front of the project, where the content still has to be produced and the rehearsal still has to be found. An hour spent gathering answers before you send anything is the highest-return hour in the whole production.
A supplier cannot leave a gap unpriced. Every blank field becomes an assumption, and the safe assumption is the expensive one.
The fields, their reasons, and worked answers
This table is the template. The left column is what to write; the middle column is the reason a supplier asks, so you can judge for yourself whether an answer is good enough; the right column is a worked answer from a complete brief — pharmaceutical company, running a three-day medical conference, working with a 12 × 7 m projection surface in a hotel ballroom.
Read the middle column carefully. Every one of those reasons connects to a decision somebody has to make within the next few days, which is why vague answers do not simply produce vague results — they produce delayed ones.
| Field | Why it is asked | Example answer |
|---|---|---|
| Company, brand and what you sell | Decides tone: the same budget produces very different work for a technical audience and a consumer one | Pharmaceutical company, running a three-day medical conference |
| Event name, city and venue | Decides transport distance, local labour rules, working hours and which rulebook applies | Annual partner conference, hotel ballroom; venue confirmed |
| One primary goal, with a number | This is the sentence the design is a solution to. Without it the work optimises for looking finished | Run 40 sessions across three days with no technical downtime and recordings of every one |
| Who you want to reach | Determines sightlines, reading distances and how much of the scope is intimate versus broadcast | Practising clinicians and hospital department heads; 600 delegates |
| What is being shown or revealed | Fixes the hero position and everything that has to support it — loading, power, cues, sightlines | Main-stage presentations with slides and video, plus two breakout rooms |
| Brand assets and references | Artwork you own the rights to, at final size — plus three images that replace a page of adjectives | Logo in vector, brand guidelines, product photography; three reference images with a line on each |
| Approvers and decision date | Reveals the real timeline, which is usually your approval chain rather than the workshop | Marketing head approves; sign-off within five working days of the concept |
| Surface, screen or room dimensions | The single biggest driver of hardware cost — projector count, panel count and processing all follow from it | a 12 × 7 m projection surface in a hotel ballroom |
| Show times and repeats per day | Sets the crew bill, which on a short show is often larger than the hardware bill | Two show nights, four runs each night |
| Available power and rigging points | Decides feasibility before aesthetics — an unriggable position changes the design entirely | To be confirmed on a site visit; venue curfew applies |
| Content: who makes it, and in what format | Content is the longest-lead item on most AV scopes, and the wrong aspect ratio cannot be fixed on the night | We produce it; confirm format, resolution and the last acceptable delivery date |
Keep every heading even where the answer is "none" or "advise us". A deleted line reads as an oversight, and an oversight gets priced defensively.
The blank version, ready to paste
Here is the blank form. Most lines are a word or a number. Fill it in once, send it unchanged to each supplier, and keep a copy, because it is also the document you will check the quote against at sign-off.
Attach your reference images and brand files separately rather than describing them. Three images with one honest line each — "this layout, not this colour"; "this lighting, we do not need the moving element" — are worth more than a page of adjectives.
- Company / brand, and what you sell:
- Who buys from you, and who you want to reach at this event:
- Event name, city and venue:
- Primary goal, with a number attached:
- Secondary goal, if any:
- Elements you do not want:
- Reference images attached, with a line on what you liked about each:
- Budget range, and what it excludes:
- Who approves, and by when:
- How many suppliers you are briefing:
- Anything the venue or organiser restricts that we should know about:
- Room, stage or surface dimensions:
- Load-in date and available hours:
- Rehearsal slot, and who will attend it:
- Show dates, running times and repeats per day:
- Available power at the position, and rigging points:
- Venue noise limit and curfew:
- Content: who is producing it, in what format, by when:
- What must carry a spare (projector, server, radio channel):
The same brief, written out properly
To show the difference between filled in and useful, here is the whole brief as prose. Six paragraphs, written by pharmaceutical company, running a three-day medical conference, each one specific enough that a supplier could start from it.
Notice how little of it is about appearance. Appearance is the one thing a supplier can propose; everything else has to come from you.
01
Context: the business and the buyer
We host a clinical conference each year for about 600 delegates, with a main stage and two breakout rooms running in parallel. Speakers are practising clinicians who arrive with their own slides, often on the morning of their session, and some present remotely. Last year we lost most of a session to a laptop that would not connect.
02
Venue, power and show times
We are working with a 12 × 7 m projection surface in a hotel ballroom — two show nights, four runs each night. Power and rigging points need checking on site; the venue has a noise limit and a curfew, and we can load in the day before with a rehearsal slot that evening.
03
What the show has to achieve
The primary goal is reliability: 40 sessions over three days with no technical downtime, and a usable recording of every one for our education portal. Secondary is speaker comfort — confidence monitors and a clear countdown, because our speakers are not professional presenters. We would rather spend on redundancy and a technician in every room than on a larger screen.
04
What has to happen, and what cannot fail
What has to happen: main-stage presentations with slides and video, plus two breakout rooms. The elements we cannot do without are main stage with confidence monitors, two breakout setups, recording of every session, and a technician per room. Content is ours to supply and we will confirm the format and aspect ratio with you — tell us the last date you can accept final files and still rehearse properly.
05
Budget and priorities
Our band is ₹4–5 lakh for the technical production, with venue charges and GST outside it. Priorities: reliability first, scale second. Itemise content, hardware, rigging, crew and rehearsal separately — we want to be able to cut one without cutting all of them.
06
Who approves, and how fast
Our conference committee approves, which meets weekly, so build a week of decision latency into any schedule you propose. We are briefing three suppliers. Please be explicit about what carries a spare, what happens if a speaker arrives with an incompatible laptop, and who is in the room during each session.
From brief to itemised quote
A brief that complete can be costed without a single clarifying question. Below is the itemisation it produces for a 12 × 7 m projection surface in a hotel ballroom, two show nights, four runs each night. Rental by day; bundled with stall builds. So read the figures as an illustration of where money goes on a scope like this, not as a price list — the total lands inside the stated ₹4–5 lakh range, which is the real test of whether a budget field was useful.
The ratio is the useful part. Projection and playback hardware accounts for 35% here, and everything else — content, rigging and power, crew, rehearsal, freight — makes up the other 65%. Budgeting for hardware alone therefore under-funds the production badly, and the under-funded lines are the ones that decide reliability.
| Projection hardware — projectors, lenses, media server | ₹1,40,000 |
|---|---|
| Content design, animation and mapping to the surface | ₹95,000 |
| Rigging, truss and distribution boards | ₹48,000 |
| Crew — technicians and an operator for every run | ₹62,000 |
| Site survey, test run and rehearsal | ₹25,000 |
| Transport, both ways | ₹30,000 |
| Indicative total for the scope, before GST | ₹4,00,000 |
Illustrative only. This service is quoted per show against surface size, projector count and content length, so treat the proportions rather than the figures as the planning tool. Venue charges and GST are extra.
Exhibiting soon? Let's build your stall.
The cost of a blank field
Here is the argument for the twenty minutes. A gap in a brief is not a gap in a quote; the supplier has to put a number against it either way. Guessing low exposes them, so they guess safe, and safe is more expensive. You pay for every field you did not fill in.
Worse, the assumption is invisible. You will not see "we allowed for the conservative case because you did not say" on the quote; you will just see a number that is higher than a competitor's, and you will conclude the competitor is cheaper when in fact they assumed the opposite.
| Field left blank | What the supplier has to assume | What it does to the quote |
|---|---|---|
| Who you want to reach | A broad, mixed audience | A broadcast solution when you needed an intimate one, or the reverse |
| Dates and times | A comfortable schedule | The quote expires the moment real dates arrive, and rush labour appears later |
| Approvers and decision date | One reviewer, fast turnaround | Revision rounds run out, and the extra ones push production |
| Surface or screen dimensions | Nothing can be assumed | No quote at all, because projector and panel counts follow from this one number |
| Show times and repeats | A single run | Crew and operator days under-counted, then invoiced as overtime |
| Available power and rigging | The conservative case | A generator and distribution priced in that you may not need, or a design that cannot be hung |
| Content format and delivery date | Content arrives in good time | The first full run happens in front of your audience |
| Redundancy requirements | No spares | A single point of failure between you and a dark screen |
| Venue noise limit and curfew | Standard hours | Rework on site, or a show that has to end earlier than announced |
| Who calls the cues | The supplier will | Cues that work in the prep bay and not on the night |
Every row here is a reasonable response to missing information. That is the point: the cost is not caused by the supplier, and it cannot be negotiated away afterwards.
Suppliers do not punish vague briefs. They price them safely, which amounts to the same thing.
What an AV & LED wall support brief needs beyond the basics
The core fields apply to any stall or event scope. For AV & LED wall support there are a handful of additional lines that change the quote materially, and they are the ones most often left out because they sound technical. They are not — each one is a yes, a no or a number.
Where you have no view, say "advise us" — a supplier will happily recommend, and will price the recommendation. What they cannot do is price a blank.
- Screen size and pixel pitch, or projection surface dimensions and ambient light level
- Who is producing content, and whether it exists yet in the right aspect ratio
- Available power at the position, rigging points, and the venue's noise and curfew limits
- What has to carry a spare — a second projector, a backup server, a redundant radio channel
- What has to be lockable or removed overnight, and who is responsible for securing it
How briefs go wrong
A brief fails in predictable ways, and almost none of them are about effort — plenty of unusable briefs are five pages long. What distinguishes the usable ones is numbers and outcomes rather than description.
The worst of them is the brief that describes a look instead of a job. "Clean, premium, impactful" is three words that constrain nothing — every supplier agrees with all three and none of them can act on any of them. Replace each adjective with the audience behaviour you want and the brief starts doing work.
Close behind is the brief that evolves between suppliers. Learning from the first conversation and improving the second brief feels like diligence; it destroys the only thing that made the exercise worthwhile, which was comparability. Update everyone or nobody.
- No named approver, so revision rounds expand until production is squeezed
- Dates missing, so the schedule and any rush cost are both unknown
- A different, improved brief sent to each supplier, destroying comparability
- Five pages of company background and no single sentence about the outcome
- No budget range, which produces either an unaffordable concept or an under-designed one
- Not sharing the venue's power, rigging and curfew limits, which decide what is possible
- Reference images with no explanation of what you liked in them
- Asking for a "best price" instead of an itemised quote against a fixed scope
- Logos supplied as a low-resolution image lifted from a website
- No surface, screen or room dimensions, which makes the quote arithmetic impossible
Send it, and what comes back
Email it or paste it into the enquiry form, attachments included. What comes back is a concept and an itemised quote, normally inside 48 hours, plus an honest view on whether your dates are workable — which is worth more than the price if the event is close.
Rental by day; bundled with stall builds. Design is free with a confirmed fabrication order, production happens in our own workshops, organiser submissions are ours to prepare and file, and one named project manager owns the job from the brief through to clearing the site. Tight dates are better declared than discovered.
- Touchscreens and kiosks
- PA systems and mics
- On-site AV technicians
- Indoor P2.5–P3.9 LED walls
Frequently asked questions
What should an AV & LED wall support brief include?+
The venue and the surface, the dates and show times, the goal and the money — then the audience, what is being shown, who is producing the content and in what format, what has to carry a spare, your brand files, and the name of whoever signs it off. One page covers all of it.
Should I share my budget with suppliers?+
Yes. The fear is that naming a number means paying it, but the opposite happens: an unnamed budget produces a concept aimed at the middle or the top of the market, and you spend a revision round correcting the aim. A band of the shape "four to five lakh, excluding venue charges" is enough.
How long should the brief be?+
Short enough to read in two minutes. The useful brief is a list of answers, not an essay: the scope, the dates, the goal, the money, the contents, the approver. Company background can be one sentence; everything a supplier needs in order to quote fits on a single page.
Should I send the same brief to every supplier?+
Yes, and resist improving it as you go. It feels efficient to add detail you learn from the first conversation, but it guarantees that the figures you receive answer different questions. If you learn something worth adding, send it to everyone the same day.
What if I do not know the answer to a field?+
Write "advise us" or "not applicable" rather than deleting the line. A supplier reading a shortened brief cannot tell the difference between a deliberate no and an oversight, and will assume the version that is safer to price — which is the more expensive one.
Why do show times and repeats matter so much?+
Because they set the crew bill rather than the kit bill. The number of runs, the gaps between them and the number of event days decide how many operator shifts are needed, whether anything can be reset in between, and how much of the rig has to be duplicated to survive a fast turnaround.
Do I need to specify equipment in the brief?+
Describe the room and the result, not the model numbers. Dimensions, ambient light, audience, show pattern and redundancy requirements are yours; translating them into a projector count or a panel pitch is the supplier's job, and it belongs in a named equipment schedule you approve.
Should I brief before or after confirming the venue?+
Ideally once the room is known, since the design is constrained by what can be hung and powered there. Where the venue is still open, say so and brief against the shortlist — a supplier can usually tell you which option costs least to achieve the same effect.
Does this template work for AV & LED wall support as well as for a plain stall?+
The core is the same; the additions differ. An AV & LED wall support brief needs a handful of further lines that change the quote materially, and they are listed on this page. They sound technical but each is a yes, a no or a number.
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