Kojichu

For many people, a picture of Tokyo at nighttime is a symbol for a whole country: lots of flashing lights make the city looks like a giant, 700 square kilometers disco. Nearly every shop, even the small ones, are illuminated 24 - 7.

Well, first to mention: If you see such a picture from the nightly skyline of Tokyo, probably it is an older one. After the nuclear disaster in 2011, nearly every nuclear plant in Japan was shut down, and since then, the people's attitude is saving energy whenever possible. Now, Tokyo at night isn`t lighted like a fun fair anymore, but of course colorful lights still exists.

In Japan, the houses have to move together, like the people who are living here. Thus, the houses tend to stretch more vertically, than on the ground. Sometimes, when you go into a store, it seems not bigger than your own living room, but it has perceived 300 floors. Easy to confuse these shops with some apartment buildings. To stand out lighting plays an important role.

Now, you may think they do it in the same way on exhibitions, but be careful – it would be too easy to generalize this. Of course, it depends on the kind of exhibition you visit. At the Anime-Trade, the lights are usually much more colorful and flashy, but at the most exhibitions, things look similar to Germany.

There, often you can see some headlights, fixed on a scaffold, lightning logos or lights built in walls – but normally, the light don’t get too bright and annoying. Most of the booths use their lights to illuminate and highlight their products. Sure, the product is the „star“ at the booth. Exceptions prove the rule, of course there are booths that exaggerate.

The color of the lights also play a decisive role: some booths uses bright white light, other uses warm colors. Which one the operators use depends on their purpose: the white light is more to shine on the products, the warm light is more to create some atmosphere at the booth. Tendentially, German booths uses warm light more often, Japanese booth operators prefer the white light to highlight their products.

The wide range of creativity runs from „super-terrific“ to „super-pathetic“. I saw booths that feature huge chandeliers, glittering and changing color all the time. Of course, the flashy colors are questionable, but in any case: this is an eye catcher.
But I also saw some booths that just had a poor LED-light hose at the top of the booth (that one surely wasn’t a „Welkam“ booth ;-)). There are obviously lots of different opinions about the importance of lights at exhibition booths.