hen your company's signature mark is a hand-drawn doodle, it's no surprise that notebooks and pens would be involved in your exhibit design. But HTC Corp., which makes smart phones and mobile devices, surprised everyone when it showed off its trademark doodling in epic proportions at the International Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless show. With the help of DisplayWorks LLC, the company created four gigantic journals that filled its 40-by-90-foot space - each book revealing a story about an HTC smart-phone end user and his or her preferred phone features. These vignettes were displayed via a combination of sketches and 3-D graphics that ran amok, tumbling off journal pages, wiggling across booth carpet, and scattering onto the back wall to create an aesthetic that Exhibit Design Awards judges called "whimsical" and "effective."

Each of the 8-by-12-foot journals, made of wood with high-pressure laminated graphics, were accompanied by a 3-D cutout graphic of an imaginary end user. "The journals captured who HTC is," said Jeff Hirouji, senior creative at DisplayWorks. "The doodles came to life, which created little areas of surprise in the exhibit."

Mischievous design details were sprinkled around the booth, such as a scooter that teetered between the realms of 2-D and 3-D as it emerged from the back wall, hinting at the new 3-D capabilities of the HTC phone, and comic-book-style thought bubbles that hovered over benches, effectively pulling attendees into the HTC universe.

"There's a sense of humor to this that I really appreciate," one judge said. Indeed, the drawings and 3-D graphics delighted attendees as well. As they walked amid the pages of the journals, they were made privy to HTC's new products and the company's off-kilter personality. The entire exhibit seemed to echo the HTC tagline: "Quietly Brilliant."e