Online Ticketing for Messe Frankfurt

With over 130 trade fairs and 3.5 million visitors a year, Messe Frankfurt is one of the world’s largest trade fair organizers. Its digital ticket shop is the central contact point.

With its new concept in 2017, the ticket shop was created to represent the Messe Frankfurt brand and its trade fairs in a contemporary way, as well as providing a basic design for further digital touchpoints.

In addition to the ticket shop, we conceived and designed another portal that enables 90,000 exhibitors a year to send tickets to their employees and guests. We also revised the user interface of Messe Frankfurt’s POS system.

We looked to visual guidance systems – such as those used at trade fairs – to rethink the user experience. These guide visitors along the entire route, provide orientation within a building and provide additional information beyond the actual navigation. This type of signage system informed our interface design process. Additionally, individual details, such as a personal approach and a moderated process, guide users quickly and easily through the ticket purchase process.

The aim of both projects was not only to create a smooth user journey, but also an appearance that could be transferred to other touchpoints. Parallel to the creation of the portal, we defined UX and design patterns that offer a consistent basic design for other Messe Frankfurt touchpoints.

During the project, all elements and modules were provided in the form of a living style guide, which depicts both the templates and the individual elements interactively and responsively.

On this basis, we compiled a living style guide for the entire Messe Frankfurt brand world, which continuously incorporates new elements and offers a continuously-growing pool of design patterns and code snippets for new projects.

The design of both the ticket shop for trade fair visitors and the exhibitor ticket portal must be adaptable to the branding of over 150 different trade fairs.

In order to make this possible, we defined an algorithm that adapts the basic colors of the trade fair for marking and interaction colors. In this way, the trade fair branding becomes visible in selected elements and modules.

Brand Strategy

Brand Portal

UX/UI Design

Icons

Design System