Projection Mapping Checklist: 20 Things to Confirm Before Your Event

What this projection mapping checklist is for

We map video content onto building facades, stage sets, product launches and exhibition stalls so the surface itself moves, transforms and tells your brand story. Content design, high-lumen projectors, media servers and on-site technicians come as one package.

A checklist earns its place only when each line has a consequence attached. "Confirm the electrical load" is a noun, and nouns get ticked without being done. "Confirm the electrical load, because an under-declared load gets the stand switched off at the mains and the organiser's electrician is not available at nine on the first morning" is a reason to pick up the phone today. Everything below is written in the second form.

Work the phases in order, and do not let enthusiasm start one early. A stand that is late almost never got slow in the workshop — it got started twice, because the phase it depended on had not actually closed when the next one began.

Written for event managers, corporate communication teams and agencies running conferences, launches, dealer meets and public shows, and deliberately not written for a particular size of stand. A 9 sq.m stand has fewer items in each phase than a pavilion, but it has the same phases, the same gates and the same two owners — one on your side, one on the build side.

Who is accountable for what, and by when

Dates slip because stages have no owner, not because people are careless. The table below is the spine of the project: one line per stage, one accountable party, and a deadline expressed in weeks before the show so that it survives a change of date. If the show moves, you move the column rather than rewriting the logic.

Work out which rows are load-bearing before you negotiate any of them. Two or three stages here hold up everything that follows, and those are the ones to over-protect; the rest can move a few days without anybody noticing.

Phase 1 — brief and budget

This is the cheapest phase to get right and by far the most expensive to get wrong, because everything downstream inherits it. A brief is not a creative document; it is a constraints document. Area, open sides, height limit, access hours, budget band, and the one visitor action the stand exists to produce.

Write the goal as a sentence, not an adjective. An experience strong enough that guests film and share it, with a clear brand moment and a call to action timed in the show is a goal you can design against and judge afterwards. "Premium and impactful" is not, and a stand briefed that way gets approved on taste and reviewed on results.

• The internal deadline for saying yes to the show itself, because a late yes is the one delay no schedule can absorb
• What you are reusing from the last show, and where it is physically stored — elements nobody can locate are elements you will pay to build a second time
• Brand assets at print resolution, with logo variants and Pantone or CMYK references — a low-resolution logo pulled off a website is the most common reprint there is
• The products that will actually stand on the stand, with their weight and dimensions — a machine that will not fit through the hall door is a problem with no on-site solution
• Build-up, show and dismantle dates with the access hours attached — your usable build time is set by the organiser, not by your plan, and night-shift labour is priced differently
• Maximum height, rigging rules and setback from the aisle, in writing from the organiser — a design drawn above the limit is a design that gets rejected after you have paid for it
• Stall area in square metres and the number of open sides — three open sides means three finished faces, three lighting runs and more staff than an inline stand of identical area
• Who will physically staff the stand, and whether they are free every show day — a roster agreed in week one avoids a stand run by whoever happened to be available

Phase 2 — design sign-off

"Approved" usually means somebody liked the render. That is half a sign-off. The other half asks whether it can be fabricated at the quoted price, powered within the declared load, moved through the hall's doors, and stamped by the organiser — and that half is what protects the schedule.

Changes at this stage are free. Changes after production release are paid for in material, labour and time. Changes during build-up are paid for at night-shift rates using whatever material happens to be in the van. The entire value of this phase is that it is the last moment where "actually, can we move the counter" costs nothing at all.

• A deliberate decision about what the stand does not do, written down, so scope does not grow quietly through the approval chain
• A written note of what was rejected and why, so the same idea does not return in week five as a fresh suggestion
• Every graphic panel checked for text size and safe margins, because type cropped at a panel join cannot be fixed at the venue
• Ramp, threshold and turning space checked on the floor plan — accessibility is easy on paper and impossible to retrofit
• Eye-level views from the aisle, not only a flattering raised corner render — you should be approving what a visitor will actually see when they walk past
• The hero product's position fixed first, with everything else arranged around it rather than the other way round
• Lighting count and position marked on the plan — hall lighting is designed for circulation, not for your product, and an unlit stand reads as under-funded whatever the joinery cost
• Storage checked against what you are genuinely bringing — the standard allowance is 10% of the area up to 18 sq.m and 15% above it, and stock that does not fit ends up stacked in front of buyers

An unowned item is an item nobody is doing.

Phase 3 — approvals, artwork and release

The work here is mostly waiting, and waiting is the hardest thing to manage because it generates no alarm. Submit early, chase deliberately, and treat every outstanding approval as a stopped production line rather than as an administrative loose end.

Treat the organiser's rulebook as a design input rather than a formality. Height limits, rigging permissions, fire ratings, floor loading, setback and the dismantle window are not negotiable on site, and a resubmission after a rejected drawing costs a working week that nobody has budgeted for.

• Rigging and hanging-banner permission confirmed against the hall's actual hook positions rather than assumed ones
• Insurance and public liability cover in place for the build crew and the show days, in the name the organiser asks for
• Floor loading checked against the hall's limit for anything heavy — a machine, a vehicle, a water feature or a fully stocked store
• Lead capture chosen and tested now rather than in the taxi to the venue, with somebody named to export the data each evening
• Vehicle, driver and crew details submitted for passes in the format the venue's security desk accepts
• Print-ready artwork released at final dimensions with bleed, to a named date — "coming shortly" is not a date and cannot be scheduled against
• Payment milestones aligned to the production schedule, so finished work is never held at a workshop over an invoice during the last fortnight
• The exhibitor manual read by somebody rather than filed by everybody — most of what goes wrong on site was written down in it months earlier

Scope check for projection mapping

Itemise or you cannot check. The two failures a lump sum conceals are paying twice for the same thing and paying for nothing at all, and both are discovered on site, where neither can be fixed cheaply.

Below are the elements this service should cover, followed by the items quotes habitually omit. If one quote is far cheaper than the rest, the difference is usually sitting in that second group rather than in the quality of the build.

• Facade, stage and object projection mapping — confirm it is priced inside the figure you are comparing, rather than noted as available on request
• 3D content design and animation in-house — name it in the order with a quantity against it, not only in the render — line items are what site crews work from, and renders are not contractual
• High-lumen laser projectors and media servers — pin the material and the finish code, because "as per design" is not a specification a workshop can cut to
• Site survey, test-run and show-calling crew — write down who supplies it and who installs it; the items that go missing are always the ones both sides assumed the other was bringing
• Transport to the venue and back, with the vehicle type and the number of trips stated
• Cover on every show day — who answers if something fails at nine in the morning, and how long they take to arrive
• Reprints and small changes after sign-off, priced now rather than negotiated under pressure later
• Dismantle and clearance inside the organiser's window, including removal of waste from the hall
• GST, organiser charges and any venue levy, shown on their own lines rather than folded into the build

Phase 4 — the pre-dispatch inspection

For AV, stage and show work the pre-dispatch check is a kit prep followed by a technical rehearsal, and the two are not interchangeable. Every screen, projector, media server, mixer, microphone and cable is powered up, loaded with your actual content at the actual resolution, run from the actual cue sheet, and then packed alongside the spare that will save the show. Equipment that has only been checked on a packing list has not been checked.

Hold the dispatch gate. Loading on a promise to finish at the venue converts a workshop problem into a build-up problem, and build-up has no spare hours in it. The decision to load is a judgement somebody has to make in front of the work, not a line in a schedule.

• Stock, samples and giveaways counted and packed separately from the build, with their own list and their own owner
• Every crate and panel labelled against the drawing, with a loading list signed by the person who physically loaded it
• Assembled or part-assembled in the workshop with graphics mounted, so alignment problems surface before dispatch rather than at midnight in a hall
• Graphics checked against the final approved artwork file, not against the version that was approved three revisions ago
• All lighting powered up and run in — a failed driver found in the workshop is a spare part, and the same driver found on site is a dark brand wall
• Crew travel, accommodation and site passes booked — a crew that reaches the venue without a pass is a crew standing outside your hall
• Snag list raised, closed and then re-walked. A snag list that is raised and hoped about is a snag list that travels with the truck
• Photographed from every side and shared with you for written approval — you do not have to be in the workshop, but you do have to see it

Phase 5 — build-up at the venue

Guard the technical run the way you would guard the show itself. Rigging inspections, power availability and the hall's own crew all sit outside your control, so build the load-in with slack ahead of the rehearsal rather than after it. A simple show that has been run once beats an ambitious one that has only been described.

The table is a sequence, not a scorecard. Nothing in it is difficult on its own; the difficulty is entirely in doing them in this order while other exhibitors compete for the same dock, the same forklift and the same electrician.

Phase 6 — the daily show-day list

Day one usually looks after itself. Day three is where stands quietly stop working — lamps blown, samples gone, screen asleep, team flat — because nobody has repeated the opening checks since the morning when everything was new.

Staff numbers are a calculation rather than a preference — area divided by 9, minimum two, giving roughly 4 for 36 sq.m and 8 for 72 sq.m. Get it wrong in either direction and the lead count falls for opposite reasons that look identical in a report.

• A named person responsible for the stand at every moment, including lunch, the organiser's awards and the final hour of the last day
• A staff roster with real breaks written into it. A tired team on day three is the actual reason conversion falls away, not the design
• A headline message legible from the aisle. If a passing visitor cannot tell what you sell in three seconds, the stand is not working however good the joinery is
• A five-minute debrief each evening: what visitors asked for, what they walked past, what to move or say differently tomorrow
• Somebody counting conversations, qualified leads and meetings each day, so the show can afterwards be judged against something
• Lead capture tested on the first scan of each day, and the day's leads exported and backed up each evening — a device that fails quietly costs you a day of names
• Phones charged and out of hands. Staff looking at phones is the most reliable way to make a busy stand look empty
• Food and water arranged off the stand, because eating on the stand ends more conversations than it starts

Phase 7 — taking it down, and cashing it in

Nobody plans the end of a show, which is why the end of a show costs money. Clearance deadlines are enforced, deposits are real, and crews are already committed elsewhere. Settle the strike plan while you are still planning the build.

Judge the show two weeks afterwards, not on the last afternoon. What matters by then is whether the leads were contacted, whether the reusable parts can be found, and whether anybody wrote down what to change — none of which happens unless it was planned before build-up.

• Photographs taken on the first morning before the crowd arrives — an empty, lit, clean stand is the only usable image you are going to get all week
• Hired items returned and signed off, so rental days stop accruing on somebody else's ledger
• Reusable elements — frames, graphics, counters, furniture, screens — inventoried and labelled as they come out, because unlabelled stock is stock you will rebuild next time
• Products and samples packed by the people who own them, before a crew starts dismantling around them
• Leads scored and followed up within 48 hours, while the conversation is still remembered on both sides of it
• Graphics kept flat and dry if the artwork will be reused, and scrapped deliberately if it will not
• Nothing valuable left on the stand during the final hour of the show, which is when halls are busiest and least supervised
• An internal debrief inside a fortnight, while the people who stood on the stand still remember what happened on it

Where checklists usually fail

Three failure modes, in order of damage: no owner, two copies, and ticks given for intention rather than evidence. The last one is the one that gets all the way to the venue before anybody notices.

Under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall. No rehearsal or technical run before doors open. Both are procurement questions rather than design ones, and both are answered the same way: ask who physically does the work, in which workshop, with which crew, before you compare any prices.

• Missing backup power or spare units
• Content not built for the actual screen or surface size
• Under-specified equipment that looks dull in a bright hall
• No rehearsal or technical run before doors open
• The exhibitor manual filed unread, which is where most of the week's surprises were written down in advance
• Progress measured by how much has been done rather than by what is now unblocked
• Optimism about transit time, which is the one variable nobody controls and everybody underestimates
• Deadlines written as dates rather than as weeks before the show, so a change of show date silently invalidates all of them
• Two copies of the checklist, one with the exhibitor and one with the vendor, quietly diverging from about week three onward

Ask for a dated version of this list

Send the show, the city, the dates, the area, the open sides and a couple of references. We come back with a concept, an itemised scope for projection mapping and this checklist carrying your actual deadlines, normally inside two days.

Design is free with a confirmed fabrication order, the build happens in our own workshops, and the organiser submissions are ours to prepare. One project manager carries the schedule from brief to clearance, because a checklist with two owners is a checklist with none.