itanium-dioxide products aren’t exactly known for their surprise and whimsy. Yet judges used these same two adjectives to describe this exhibit for German titanium-dioxide manufacturer Sachtleben Chemie GmbH.

Despite its fanciful design, however, the exhibit was born of rather complex challenges. Sachtleben asked the designers Dirk Bachmann-Kern and Bernd Straeter not only to create a reaction-inducing design featuring titanium dioxide — a white pigment used in everything from food coloring to sun screen — but also to communicate eight types of complex products.

Facing this multi-faceted challenge, the two designers at Bachmann.Kern & Partner based their design on the booth’s main message — “Great solutions with small particles” — but enlarged the particles to hundreds of times their actual size.

Represented by roughly 88 white polystyrene balls, the particles seemed drawn toward the exhibit’s 13-foot-tall curved wall. While designers painted the left corner of the wall with Sachtleben’s corporate blue, they coated the remaining wall with actual titanium dioxide. The design suggested that once the particles reached the wall, they melted onto the structure, coating it in a brilliant white.

The eight required product presentations were offered via four groups of monitors positioned throughout the 40-by-30-foot booth. Each group of monitors featured two different products, but rather than bombarding visitors with technical jargon at every turn, the monitors offered looping presentations featuring bite-sized bits of data.

The minimalist design mixed relatively common elements to concoct an exhibit that wasn’t only stunning, it was also a quantum leap from the business-as-usual booth you’d expect.e