Crumpler - USA trade show stand

Photos - Ben Richards

Photo - dvice

Most Melburnians would also have read the story about how Crumpler was founded in 1995 by Dave Roper and Will Miller (ex bike couriers), and sculptor/furniture maker/bike courier Stuart Crumpler. Apparently they couldn't find any cool-looking, durable messenger bags to wear on their bikes... so Crumpler was born. Initially the bags were worn by couriers at their company, and gradually as these prototypes were spotted all over town, interest grew and their bags went into production. Over 10 years later Crumpler is a recognised brand all over the world, and continues to grow.

Crumpler doesn't just design a great range of bags, camera and laptop cases... They are also fantastic at fostering local creative talent - they often collaborate with local young creatives for their super-kooky marketing campaigns (like the Crumpler ABC website by Tin&Ed that I linked to last week). They also sponsor various events including film festivals such as the Melbourne University 'U Film Fest' and Enhance TV ATOM Awards, where they have offered student filmmakers the chance to create a Crumpler advertisement for TV/cinema.

Crumpler's in-house designer Joel Adams has just completed a fantastic new tradeshow stand that's just had it's first outing touring the USA at a number of tradeshows. Joel developed the concept, inspired by an historic volume of architectural etchings and toy dinosaur construction kits. He worked in collaboration with graphic artists Tin&Ed (again!) to compile a dreamy landscape of grand buildings, fanciful creatures, and unidentified flying objects. It won an award for best stand at Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2008 in Salt Lake City.

The stand looks incredible in the shots (above)... a great combination of intricately detailed illustration, and large scale construction. You can see more here, and a great widescreen time-lapse series of the construction process here. US tech blog Dvice also did a nice little write up here.