LEARN ABOUT US
Who Are We?
The Experiential Design Authority is an international body that oversees global experiential design competitions, honoring exhibits, events, expos, and immersive experiences. Led by the originator of the Portable/Modular Awards, World Expo Awards, Find It - Top 40, Centers of Excellence, EuroShop Awards, Best of CES, and ISE Stand Design Awards competitions, the Experiential Design Authority exists to provide affordable, unbiased, wholly transparent opportunities for experiential marketers and designers to earn global accolades for their hard work.
The Experiential Design Authority is dedicated to honoring excellence in experiential design on a global scale. From stunning exhibits and immersive events to groundbreaking expos, we celebrate the creativity, innovation, and impact of experiential marketers and designers.
We proudly reject paid advertising and sponsorship dollars to ensure our competitions remain wholly impartial. Our rigorous judging process emphasizes fairness: judges remain unaware of the companies behind each submission, they are selected at random from among a pool of eligible advisory board members, and our scoring system excludes the highest and lowest scores to maintain objectivity. To further uphold transparency, we release cumulative scores to all participants.
The Experiential Design Authority is more than an awards body — it is a community of likeminded individuals who are passionate about experiential marketing and design, boasting impressive U.S. and international advisory boards comprised of experts in a variety of fields. If you're interested in serving on one of our boards, please click the link below to contact us.
See additional information below the Advisory Board.
Additional Information
Unbiased Evaluations: The mission of The Experiential Design Authority is to provide an unbiased awards program that honors the most exceptional and innovative work without regard for who entered, created, or designed the project. As such, The Experiential Design Authority will never accept any direct advertising or sponsorship dollars from any entrant. Furthermore, scores will be distributed to all finalists following the competition, and any relevant comments from the judges can be requested by entrants following the awards ceremony. For this reason, all evaluations are blind (meaning the judges will not know who designed, fabricated, or entered each project) and evaluated objectively (the numeric scores submitted by judges are the only criteria used to select the competition’s honorees — with the only exception being the People’s Choice Award, which is selected by popular vote). Additionally, the highest and lowest scores are omitted to ensure no single judge is able to have an undue impact on the results.
Affordable Entry Fees: The best of the best can only be established if all applicable projects are submitted for entry, which is one reason we commit to keeping our entry fees low, enabling entrants to submit a larger volume of their work. Because of The Experiential Design Authority's low overhead costs, we are able to offer exceptionally low entry fees. As a result, our fees are at least 30-percent less than other comparable competitions, and we offer volume discounts for companies submitting several entries in a given competition. Additionally, we offer complimentary entries for any student-related projects affiliated with an approved school or educational program and are working with industry associations to offer one complimentary entry in each competition as a benefit of membership.
Opportunity for Recognition: Rather than a single award in each category, The Experiential Design Authority presents Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award winners whenever possible, increasing the opportunity for your work to be recognized while also providing transparency into exactly where your entries ranked (and why). Given RFPs increasingly request examples of recent honors and awards, this enables a wider swath of organizations to benefit from the value of third-party objective recognition. With up to 75 awards presented annually in our ExSys Awards alone, the organization offers plenty of opportunities to recognize the breadth and depth of high-quality design and execution.
Industry Support: All net profits generated via competition entry fees will go toward student-related design competitions, internship stipends, and more.
The Experiential Design Authority reserves the right to merge or separate categories (or change square footage ranges for given categories) based on the number and caliber of entries received.
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Travis Stanton
Travis Stanton has more than 20 years of experience in the face-to-face marketing industry, including an 18-year tenure at Exhibitor magazine, where he served as Editor in Chief. During his time at Exhibitor, Travis launched a number of successful recognition programs created to spotlight exceptional work in the trade show and event industries, including the World Expo Awards, Portable/Modular Awards, Find It – Top 40, Centers of Excellence, EuroShop Awards, Best of CES, and Integrated Systems Europe’s Stand Design Awards. He also oversaw the publication’s Corporate Event Awards, Sizzle Awards, All Star Awards, and Exhibit Design Awards programs, producing virtual awards shows as well as live ceremonies for international events in Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, and Barcelona.
Awards and competition has always been a part of Travis' DNA. He is proud to have earned Exhibitor three Magazine of the Year awards, and he was thrilled to receive the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ Young Leader award and countless other honors for his work as a writer and editor. Additionally, Travis won the 2011 Innovator Award and the 2019 Greg Carey Leadership Award from the Minnesota Media and Publishing Association. Travis has also worked as an associate producer of the internationally televised Miss Universe pageant, broadcasting live from the United States, El Salvador, Thailand, Israel, and the Philippines.
Now, as Director of Strategy for Storylink Creative, Travis focuses on providing clients with the tools, data, insights, and strategies to optimize their experiential marketing campaigns, utilizing hard numbers to drive continuous improvement and accomplish corporate objectives. Informed by two decades of traveling the world, attending everything from small tabletop shows to major international events (such as the 2012 Summer Olympics and IFES World Summits in India and South Africa, as well as the last five World Expos in China, South Korea, Italy, Kazakhstan, and the United Arab Emirates), Travis is a sought-after speaker, trend watcher, writer/editor, and strategist with a deep love of the experiential design industry.