Figure 5
White Space. Next to content, the exhibitor’s most valuable tool is “white space”—those unoccupied areas of his display panels. Crowded, busy panels on which materials and text fill every inch of space are a hallmark of the amateur. Worse, they defeat their purpose, for viewers usually take one hurried glance, decide that understanding so cluttered an exhibit would be a chore, and move on to simpler displays. (As a rule of thumb, approximately 40% of your available display space should be occupied by absolutely nothing!)
Organization. Just as you organize words into sentences and paragraphs, your exhibit elements (textual and visual) should be organized into groups and subgroups. (See Figures [1] and [2].) Here again the “feature” technique may be employed. For example, if you are displaying several similar specimens you may emphasize the most unusual one by placing it on a raised or differently-colored background as shown in [Figure 7].
Figure 6
Figure 7
Apparatus. Amateur exhibitors sometimes get carried away with enthusiasm for large arrays of mechanical apparatus which are both unnecessary and confusing. If your project involved development of a unique piece of equipment, consider whether you can display it alone, without the entire assembly into which it fits. Sometimes this can be done by displaying the featured part alongside a drawing or photograph of the complete assembly, as in [Figure 4]. Again, keep details to a minimum; leave them in the project report.
Mechanical movement. Usually motion in a science fair exhibit is called for only when there is a clear need for it. Thus it is logical to use a turntable to revolve different fluorescing mineral specimens under “black light”, or to present successive radioactive ore specimens to a Geiger-counter probe. But to use such a turntable to present a series of photographs would probably be unnecessarily contrived. Usually you may spend your efforts better on sound content, clean design, and clear text than on mechanical gimmicks.