Portable Display – Patented By The Displayers

Can your exhibit company say they patented the ‘Portable Display’?

 

Patent drawing

The 1952 Patent Reads:

“This invention relates to display apparatus more particularly to a display which may be knocked down or collapsed for packaging in a relatively light, easy-to-handle packing case. The new apparatus comprises a plurality demountable support panels capable of being assembled together to form a display screen in a variety of specific arrangements. Each panel is made up of four-lightweight tubular frame members made preferably of a hard aluminum alloy.

 

A packing case, preferably . of lightweight ply wood, is included and is of a size sufficient to contain our entire display apparatus in knocked- down or collapsed condition. The packing . case however performs another function and that is to support a collapsible counter surface. A drape or cover, preferably of the same material as the curtains for the support panels, is provided to cover the counter supported by the packing case and to extend to the floor thereby hiding from view the open packing case and resulting in the composite counter appearing to be a table.”

 

 

US2587698.pdfUS2587698.pdf

 

 

 

 

ESPN – Display Cases

The Displayers have designed and will be constructing Memorabilia Display cases to fit within ESPN’s beautiful and modern offices set within an Armory. The design will allow for a very transparent display to blend into the environment.  Custom metalwork will mount and support a combination of acrylic and glass panels that will partially covered in vinyl graphics.

Stay tuned for more and photos!

6 Tips to Managing Client Expectations

6 Tips to Managing Client Expectations
Inc. Magazine
Michael A. Olguin
May 7, 2012

These tips will help you build longstanding relationships that can withstand the good times as well as the bad.

So much work goes into winning new business, regardless of the vertical space in which you work; there is the initial prospecting, early conversations, strategic program development, budget consideration, and creation of a deliverables timeline. Unfortunately, all of that work can come to a screeching halt before the ink is dry on the contract when the same amount of time, energy and commitment isn’t placed on managing the client’s expectations after the business is won.

To ensure this is never overlooked, we developed the Super Six: keys to developing excellent client expectations and building longstanding relationships that can withstand good times as well as bumps in the road. After all, it’s easy to keep a client when things are going well; maintaining a client when times are tough is the true test of a relationship. We believe the Super Six will aid in this process:

1. Build a relationship that goes beyond client/vendor I have long maintained that business people like working with people they not only respect, but also personally like. Therefore, we believe that developing a personal relationship goes a long way in building a stronger business relationship. Get to know the client’s family situation, how they spend their free time, where their interests lie and, most importantly, what motivates them on a daily basis. When you understand what makes them tick as a person, you can translate that into your business relationship.

2. Regularly communicate and address problems directly A lack of communication is usually at the root of most problems associated with clients. Any good client relationship will be able to weather setbacks if you are proactive in communicating both good and bad news. When communication is direct and transparent, trust forms and helps to create a foundation for long-lasting relationships.

3. Agree on strategy, goals and timelines Until you and your client agree on strategy, goals and timelines, you are always at risk of them not understanding what success is and how it should be measured. We always suggest creating a scope-of-work document that outlines the program details, budgets and metrics. This will alleviate any confusion over expectations and hopefully eliminate a difficult conversation.

4. Be a  Agree on strategy, goals and timelines When you offer your client advice, direction, input and business counsel, you become a truly valuable partner. This style of open dialogue helps to establish the respect necessary to ensure better project management. Clients hire outsourced marketing services because they want an objective opinion. If you fail at giving that POV, you subject yourself to being a “yes man or woman,” which will ultimately be your undoing.

5. Be a good listener Listening is one of the most misunderstood and least used tools in managing client expectations. Many clients are unsure of what they are trying to accomplish or not very good at articulating it. As such, you must have excellent intuition and listening skills in order to identify key messages being communicated. One of the best ways to compensate for a client who communicates poorly is to repeat what you have heard and ask them to confirm the accuracy of key takeaways, which will ultimately impact expectations.

6. Budget is not a bad word Most relationships will go south very quickly if you are not open and honest about budgets. To start, you must be realistic about setting a clear understanding of the budget required to execute the desired program. Throughout the course of the program, you must have regular dialogue about budgets. If you don’t address the client until you have an issue (i.e., operating over budget), you will not only have an unhappy client, you may also find yourself eating the overages.

At the end of the day, your ability to manage client expectations is going to hinge on how well you choose to communicate. If you leave things up to chance, chances are you and your client will both be disappointed. However, if you take the time to listen, be proactive about communicating openly and address any issues head-on, you will keep client expectations in check and be in a good position to grow your relationship over time.

http://www.inc.com/michael-olguin/6-tips-to-managing-client-expectations.html

Obesity and Other Targets of Children’s Museums

PLAY WITH A PURPOSE   EatSleepPlay at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan is intended to promote children’s health.

CHILDREN’S museums do not usually have exhibitions that involve crawling through a giant digestive system.

A child exits a maze designed to explain the function of the intestines in the digestive process.

But such an installation — along with a play center where visitors learn the power of pedaling, bouncing and jumping and a place to meet superpowered vegetable heroes — is part of a larger effort by the Children’s Museum of Manhattan to help prevent childhood obesity.

While children’s museums are primarily known as activity centers to divert the younger set and to help form future museumgoers, they are increasingly focused on social outreach. “Part of our mission is to provide access,” said Andy Ackerman, executive director of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. “Social issues, education, health and creativity — it’s all a continuum, and we can connect those domains and reinforce each of them.”

The Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore has adapted museum exhibits and programming for children with special needs. The Young at Art Museum in Davie, Fla., has an afterschool arts program for homeless students. The Providence Children’s Museum in Rhode Island helps children in foster care find permanent families. And the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan provides a place for foster-care children to reunite with their birth parents by making art together.

“As resources become more and more scarce, everybody’s looking to children’s museums to fill varying kinds of needs for children and families,” said Janet Rice Elman, executive director of the Association of Children’s Museums in Arlington, Va. “These are places where families can learn through play — from science to early literacy skills to parenting — in settings that are joyful.”

Many of these programs involve collaborations with other organizations that have specific expertise. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan on the Upper West Side, for example, developed its so-called EatSleepPlay effort with the National Institutes of Health and collaborates with the City University of New York on training at-home child-care providers in teaching literacy, math and science.

The Children’s Museum of the Arts in SoHo has joined with Henry Street Settlement’s Urban Family Center to bring free weaving, printmaking and sculpture to children living in transitional housing, culminating with a children’s art exhibition and a reception for families and friends. And the Boston Children’s Museum is joining with Head Start, Boston Public Schools and the City of Boston to prepare students for kindergarten.

“We want to be relevant to our communities,” said Jeri Robinson, the vice president for early childhood and family learning at the Boston museum.

Museums are also developing continuing relationships with outside experts. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, for example, has worked closely with health advisers like Dr. Judith Owens, director of sleep medicine at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. Her research helped the museum develop the sleep section of the EatSleepPlay exhibition,  covering topics like preparing for sleep, what happens during sleep and how much sleep children need.

Rather than serving as just one more recreational option, children’s museums are recasting themselves as essential anchors in their communities — “the hub or the center,” Mr. Ackerman said.

“Educating through the arts,” he added. “That’s how you change behavior.”

The New-York Historical Society is seeking to educate with its new DiMenna Children’s History Museum, which opened last fall. Young visitors learn about prejudice by studying the life story of James McCune Smith, the first African-American to earn a medical degree. They learn about money and credit by visiting the Alexander Hamilton pavilion. “All of the exhibits we’ve developed are focused on teaching a skill or a behavior,” said Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive.

The museums are also reaching beyond their walls to take their programming more aggressively into underprivileged neighborhoods. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan is replicating its exhibitions in East Harlem’s public housing. It sends two artists to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center every week to work with children. And it is running health and literacy programs in the Bronx and New Orleans.

And children’s museums are making a concerted effort to draw specific groups of people who might otherwise not come through their doors. On Mondays, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan is open to children with autism and their families, as well as to school groups. “They need a quiet venue,” Mr. Ackerman said.

The ARTogether program at the Children’s Museum of the Arts brings foster children together with their biological parents to create art, led by a clinically trained, licensed art therapist. The museum recently expanded the effort to include families with children at risk of being placed in foster care. It has hired staff members who speak Mandarin and Cantonese.

“You can come to our space and participate alongside other folks who maybe aren’t having the same challenges,” said David Kaplan, the museum’s executive director. “You want to be supportive of families in the program but you want to be empowering them — you don’t want them to rely on you forever. Eventually you want them coming to the museum on their own terms and on their own time.”

In opening a larger space last fall, the Children’s Museum of the Arts hopes to generate more revenue to benefit children at risk, to provide a “nice, safe environment for people to come to,” Mr. Kaplan said.

Not only are children’s museums seeking to educate, they want their visitors to feel comfortable entering cultural institutions for many years to come and to see exhibitions that affirm their own experience. “The audiences who are living here want to be able to come here and see their lives reflected,” said Ms. Robinson of the Boston museum.

In some cases, the exhibits also take the visitors to places they have never been. The museum now features a Japanese silk weaver’s house that was a gift from Kyoto. “Many of our kids will never go to Japan,” Ms. Robinson said. “But they can have an authentic Japanese experience by coming to our house.”

By Robin Pogrebin / Published: March 14, 2012 / on page F2 of the New York Times

Optically clear acrylic joints

Making really perfect, optically-clear acrylic joints

There is surprisingly little information on the ‘net regarding acrylic joinery. Gluing two pieces of acrylic is a common operation for many hobbyists and craftspeople, but it seems the only forums that deal with acrylic are those that attract custom aquarium builders. Those projects are often very large and use slightly different techniques than what would be used for small projects. I had to search for a long time and still came up with relatively little info, so I would like to share my experiences.

There are a handful of different general methods that can be used two join one acrylic edge to the surface of another piece. I have tried a few, and think that the “pins method” is definitely the easiest and most reliable. In this method, one piece of acrylic is supported on its edge by a series of pins, spaced about 6 inches apart, above the face of another piece of acrylic. The solvent is applied to the gap and allowed to soften the acrylic for about 30 seconds. The pins are then removed, and the top piece is lowered onto the bottom piece. The joint must be supported for a few minutes until it is strong enough to hold the weight of the piece. The result is usually very good, and the operation can be controlled by using pins of different diameters, and letting the solvent soften the pieces for more or less time.

Step 1: The most critical step is edge preparation. The edge of the acrylic must be extremely flat and smooth. My favorite tools to achieve this in order of preference: 1. Jointer 2. Router 3. Table saw with high-quality blade 4. sanding. I would only recommend sanding if you are preparing the face of a box or the end of a large-diameter acrylic tube. Sanding is usually extremely slow, and does not work at all if you are trying to hand-hold a single sheet of acrylic at 90* to the sandpaper. If sanding is necessary, use a large sheet of glass with sandpaper attached to it with double-sided tape. Push the part back and forth over the sandpaper, and move up through the grits. The glass will make sure the surface is as flat as possible. Generally, water is used with grits 320 and higher, and I would say 320 is as fine as the surface needs to be. I would not recommend a power sander because the are hard to control, usually do not cover the whole surface of the part, and tend to overheat the acrylic.

Step 2: Position the parts with a jig or a square. It’s important to position the parts so that the bottom piece extends 1/32″ to 1/16″ past the outer edge of the top piece. This will hold the excess solvent and will make life easier because the excess can be cut away with a router flush-cut bit later.

Step 3: Insert pins between the bottom and top pieces every six inches. Sewing pins are usually too fat. I like to use short pieces of solid copper wire that measure .015″ dia. If the pins are too fat, when you remove them there will be a lot of excess solvent that spills out and it will make a mess.

Step 4. Fill the gap with solvent. Use a standard “hypo applicator” or “needle bottle”. Squeeze the bottle while it is upright, then tip it upside-down while loosening your grip on the bottle. It will suck in some air, and prevent the solvent from coming out until you want it to.

Step 5. Remove the pins and let the top piece rest on the lower. Do NOT use any force to push the top piece down. As soon as the top piece is positioned correctly, let it sit completely undisturbed for 5 or 10 minutes.

You can handle the piece very carefully after 10 or 20 minutes (depending on the temperature) and continue with other glue joints in the project. Full-strength usually takes 2 to 4 days. The joint will initially look a little ‘textured’, however the optical clarity will improve over the next 24 hours. Of course, air-bubbles will never go away, so you can decide right away if the joint is not good enough in that respect.


After a lot of experimenting, I found out that the brand of acrylic and the brand of solvent make a HUGE difference in the quality of the joint. Check out this page which shows a grid of comparisons:
http://www.magconcept.com/acrylic/

Ben Krasnow – August 28, 2008

Crain’s New York – The Displayers

An article about our beginning.

 

Display maker puts together a solo effort

THE FAMILY BUSINESS CAN BE a frustrating place for a budding entrepreneur. Eager to make his own way, Greg Rathe abdicated his position as third-generation heir apparent at Rathe Productions, a big designer of trade shows and museum exhibits. Instead, four years ago he founded his own outfit, The Displayers.

“Growing your own company is something you don’t get a chance to do in a 55-year old family business,” says Mr. Rathe. Naming his company after his grandfather’s biggest competitor in the 1950s.

Mr. Rathe targeted an eclectic array of businesses, designing and installing trade show booths, exhibitions and showrooms.  Mr. Rathe says he made a specialty of fast turnarounds, calling on relationships he’d built up with suppliers during his years at the family business and assembling a melting pot of specializations on his staff.

The company balances display design with corporate identity work. Projects include in-store marketing materials for Apple Computer stores and acrylic logos for DKNY stores in Europe.  Museums may offer the most fertile ground for growth, as the size of The Displayers’ projects for that segment is increasing. The Displayers served as construction manager for the renovation of the Jewish Museum’s permanent exhibition and recently won a commission to create a 3,000-square foot exhibit at the New York City Police Museum.

The Displayers has grown to 1.4 million in revenues and eight employees.  That’s a far cry from Rathe Productions’ army of almost 100 architects, graphic designers, carpenters, metalworkers, engineers, computer specialists and artists, but Mr. Rathe says he has no regrets. “It’s like a fishing village – the sons go off and get their own boats,” he says. “There’s plenty of fish for everybody.”