Exhibition Design: The Hohhot Museum and Related Products & Technologies Expo

Museum Identity on the Expo Stage

The Museum of Modern Chinese Press and Publishing took part in the 10th China Museum and Relevant Products & Technology Expo, using this national platform to present the distinctive content and communication potential of a museum dedicated to press and publishing. Held in August 2024 at the Chilechuan International Convention and Exhibition Center in Hohhot, the expo was themed “High-Quality Development of Museums: Equal Emphasis on Education and Research, Integration of Digital and Physical.”

Within the context of the expo, this was not a conventional in-museum exhibition, but a translated display format aimed at professional exchange, institutional identity, and public communication. The design therefore needed not only to convey information, but also to establish, within a limited booth space, a clear and accessible image of the museum and make the specialized theme of press and publishing more visible to both industry and public audiences.

Design Highlights

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Presented at the 10th China Museum and Relevant Products & Technology Expo in Hohhot

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Established a clear identity for a museum dedicated to press and publishing within a broader industry exhibition

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Translated long-term museum content into a lighter and more accessible expo display format

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Responded to the expo theme by highlighting the museum’s strengths in research, education, and communication

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Addressed both professional and public audiences through a balance of specialist content and public readability

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Strengthened the museum’s brand recognition and external communication through exhibition design

Design Challenge

Unlike an in-museum exhibition, an expo booth operates in a dense and fast-moving environment, where visitors have limited time and attention. The core challenge of this project was therefore how to quickly communicate what the Museum of Modern Chinese Press and Publishing is, what makes it distinctive, and why it should be remembered within a crowded exhibition setting.

At the same time, the theme of press and publishing carries a strong professional dimension, involving publishing history, reading culture, communication, and industry development. If presented with the full density of an in-museum narrative, the content could become difficult to absorb; if oversimplified, it could lose the depth expected of a specialized museum. The design therefore needed to balance clarity, compression, and institutional identity, so that the booth could remain both professional and publicly accessible.

Design Strategy

The project is based on the idea of translating a specialized museum into an expo format, reorganizing the museum’s press-and-publishing content into a display structure suited to a trade fair setting. Rather than replicating the full in-museum narrative, the design focuses on key dimensions—institutional identity, thematic focus, public education, and digital-physical integration—to create a more efficient reading path and enable visitors to quickly grasp the museum’s character and strengths.

Spatially, the design emphasizes clarity of interface, hierarchy of information, and visual recognition. Compared with an in-museum exhibition, the booth uses more concise text, imagery, and display nodes, with a stronger focus on open browsing and clearly defined points of attention. Through a thematic and modular structure, the exhibition allows visitors to absorb core information quickly while still providing entry points for deeper professional exchange.

Project Value

The significance of this project lies in offering a more public-facing and recognizable exhibition model for specialized museums participating in industry expos.

On the national platform of the expo, the Museum of Modern Chinese Press and Publishing was presented not simply as a local institution in Shanghai, but as a cultural case study visible to a wider professional network and public audience. Through exhibition design, the project translated the museum’s specialized subject matter into a form better suited to expo communication, while increasing its visibility within the broader museum field.

For the museum sector, this kind of booth design is more than institutional display; it is also a way of externalizing curatorial, educational, and communication capacity. In a dense exchange environment, it reorganizes and delivers these strengths efficiently, offering a useful model for how specialized museums can adapt their content to professional, public, and mobile exhibition contexts.