INFORMATION BOOTHS

Information Booths are often the responsibility, and opportunity, of the Faire creator and promoter. Apart from giving information and acting as a place to offer souvenirs of the event, Information booths can be as iconic addition to your other themed Faire structures. Often placed at a crossroads or entry area, these buildings are your connection with your audience. What can be learned here can be used to improve and grow your event. As the owner of the Faire, you can also offer merchandise that is unique to your event. Maps, clothing, souvenir books, and branded glassware are obvious choices, but also consider showcasing unique crafts made by some of your vendors, and have them specifically promote your event. This will add class to your Faire, help promote your vendor’s work, and avoid the obvious choice of stenciling your logo on wine glasses undoubtedly made in China. Your event isn’t Walmart, so an opportunity to rise above that lack of quality will only help your Faire and its participants.

BUILDING ICONIC STRUCTURES

As the presenter of a Faire, you are often responsible for the design and building of many of  your core event structures. While your vendors will build the bulk of the booths that will represent the backdrop for your Faire, you will build the entry gates, stages, and other support facilities, but you also have the opportunity to build smaller iconic elements as well. This will help not only support the historical story you are trying to tell, it can also add depth to the experience, and act as themed landmarks to help your visitors navigate your event.

A Market Cross is a good example of one such iconic structure. Traditionally built in the center of a small village, the Market Cross defined the market square, and the location for weekly produce and livestock to be sold. Iconic elements like this can help establish the theme of an area, act as a visual landmark that can draw visitors to it, and become an obvious meeting place for guests who have separated from their party. Other iconic structures can include a washing well,  Wicker-man sculpture, gazeboes, and barker towers. These elements make great “wienies” but they also act as a great centerpiece for street theater. The washing well is the perfect backdrop for peasant performers to interact, gossip, and fling sopping wet clothing about, splashing passersby.

In the case of vendors, any opportunity you have of building an iconic element into the design of your booth is worth considering. You want your booth to stand out, so why not build into it elements that will help draw attention to it. Having your own fountain, tower, wagon, or even a mini stage will act as attention getters, and help your customers more easily find you again when they return. Iconic structures are also great elements to add to the Faire’s promotional Map. Including these unique visual elements into the Map’s design will also help customers orient themselves while exploring your Faire.

THRESHOLDS & ARCHWAYS

 

While you are designing the layout of your Faire you need to keep an eye one on what the experience will be on the ground. Your audience is going to be navigating your labyrinth of booths and stages and always quietly asking themselves, “Where am I, and what is my relationship to this place?” Any opportunity that you have to help them get their bearings will make the experience more pleasurable for them. We have more fun when we feel safe and can relate to our surroundings, and always feeling lost is not fun at all. Best of all, once your audience understands where they are the more they will “own” the Faire and feel at home within it. One very powerful way to help people relate to your Faire site is to create thresholds, archways, and doorways, at each point where there is a thematic or geographic change. If I now that going under the banner labeled “Traders Market” will mean I am now in Traders Market then I can relate to both the theme and its relationship to the other areas of the Faire. If Traders Market is where your guests can find crafts and food from exotic places, they will find it easier to rediscover those wares and edibles if they wish to return.

WAY FINDING & NOMENCLATURE

These are fancy ways of saying, “Clever ways to keep people from getting lost”. Signage that informs your audience where they are, and how they can relate to an area, is vital to the success of your Faire. Signs are your way of tell people where they can go to find what, but it is also a way to tell them how they can “play” in each area.  A sign that points to Gypsy Camp is one way, but if the sign looks like gypsies actually made it, then this does even more to communicating what might be experienced once you arrive there. It is also all too easy to get too “cute” with the names of places, or mislead your audience’s expectations. Calling a place “Faerie Princess Wood” is fine, but there bloody well better be Faeries and a Princess when you arrive. The language of the Renaissance is probably the richest in history, so take the opportunity to find clever ways to name things, but be careful, calling something “Potter’s Way” might suggest ceramic artists reside there, but calling it “Potter’s Field” could mean something else entirely.