2026 Exhibit Agency of the Year

One of the most anticipated moments of our annual ExSys Awards Ceremony is the announcement of the Agency of the Year Award winner. This honor goes to the exhibit house or agency that accumulated the most points cumulatively in the ExSys competition. Agencies earn three points for each Gold Award, two for each Silver, and one for each Bronze.

The 2026 Agency of the Year Award was earned by Deckel & Moneypenny. The company won five Gold Awards, two Silver Awards, one Bronze Award, and an Honorable Mention in this year’s competition.

Here, the Louisville, KY-based company's CEO, Steve Deckel, discusses the role of technology in experiential design, the fallacy that systems represent limitations, and the simple question that helps clients proactively define success.

TEDA: Deckel & Moneypenny earned recognition across a remarkably wide range of categories, from small rental exhibits to large islands, fabric designs, and technology integration. What do you think that breadth says about the agency and the way your team approaches design?

SD: I come from an advertising background and figured out how to build things after I bluffed my way into a job. I think many people in our industry have a background in building things and learned advertising on the job. I love solving challenges, and that's what the client brief is. I also love learning how and why things work, and that's our discovery process. If you look at it that way, the projects are all pretty similar.

TEDA: The ExSys Awards are specifically focused on system-based design. What do you believe is misunderstood about the creative potential of exhibit systems, and how do you challenge the perception that modular or system-based construction somehow limits creativity?

SD: You are 100-percent correct, and it's surprising to me that some people think an exhibit system is a limitation. I didn't decide to make the wheel round, and I am grateful that someone already took care of that for me. There are limits in everything, and usually there is an inherent logic to the limit. With exhibit systems, a group of people have already figured out so much that you are ahead of the game and can focus on what really matters. There are enough dragons to slay as it is.

TEDA: Several of your winning projects used technology as part of the storytelling rather than simply as an attraction. The Profile Appliances "Chaos Tunnel," for example, used relatively straightforward technology but integrated it into the narrative so that the technology essentially became part of the story. How do you decide when technology genuinely enhances an experience, and when it is just adding bells and whistles?

SD: We believe that people hire us because they want to change someone's opinion. If we are doing our job right, everything in the exhibit is a sentence in the narrative. Just like everyone else, we are tempted by bells and whistles, and sometimes a piece of tech is novel enough, for a moment in time, that we say, "Hey, let's eat the ice cream before dinner." That's not something you can do every day (and if people are doing that daily, my mom lied to me). It's great that you can grab someone's attention with a shiny thing, but what are you going to do once you have it? We believe attention is not enough. The message is why we get paid.

TEDA: GE Appliances Design District work took a very different approach, using elements such as fabric, architecture, product displays, and media programming to create an environment rather than simply a booth. What does that project reveal about where you think exhibit design is headed?

SD: We were very curatorial with that. When we got the brief, we were asked to create a "Times Square moment." A good moment, not one with Elmo and Spider-Man. Like the crystal ball descending on New Year's Eve, and you want to be there. When you hear that brief, it makes sense that the exhibit lifted and lowered in the space and was covered with mirrors and lights. I think people are looking for real-life moments of surprise and delight, and that is where we are headed.

TEDA: Deckel & Moneypenny has been an independent agency competing against some very large organizations. Does being independent influence the kinds of ideas you pursue, the risks you're willing to take, or the relationships you build with clients?

SD: I think being a small team helps us. There aren't multiple internal layers to navigate, and because we are small, everyone is closer to the end product. I think it is common with agencies our size that clients like being able to talk to leadership who not only knows their project but is probably working on a piece of it.

TEDA: You have more than 30 years of experience in exhibit design. What has changed most dramatically about the creative process during your career, and what fundamental things about great experiential design haven't changed at all?

SD: This is going to sound dumb, and I hope people don't think "so he's not going to mix it up" when I say it, but I think the biggest change was the internet. When I started, this was a regional business, information was hard to access (Trade Show Week, anyone?), and there were many competing exhibit systems that were family businesses run by the person who invented the system. The internet wiped out sales territories and disrupted how the industry functioned.

TEDA: How do you create an environment where designers, fabricators, project managers and on-site teams all feel ownership of the creative outcome? And how important was that collaboration to this year's ExSys success?

SD: We all have to align on the same goal, and that is doing great work. Focus on doing great work today and getting a little bit better tomorrow, and everything else will fall into place. Like many successful agencies, our team takes great pride in the finished piece.

TEDA: Awards can validate the work, but clients ultimately judge an experience by whether it accomplishes something for their brand. How do you and your team define "success" for an exhibit beyond its appearance or the number of awards it receives? 

SD: I think we share the same KPIs and metrics as the person reading this. One thing we do that could be different: at the start of a project, I ask our clients, "When the first day of the show is over and you are back in your hotel room with a great feeling about how the day went, what will have happened that made you realize it was going great? And when you get back home and someone asks you how the show went, how will you explain it to them?" If they can't answer those questions, or if their answers don't sound actionable, we know we have more work to do.

TEDA: When you look at the next three to five years, what are you most excited about, and perhaps most concerned about, in the evolution of experiential design, particularly as AI, technology and new fabrication capabilities continue to change what's possible?

SD: I am most excited about the human connection trend. Pinterest, a digital company built on URLs, had an exhibit that said "less URL and more IRL," unironically. We are already seeing people push back against AI creative and strive for more in-person, face-to-face events. I am excited for our future.

TEDA: Finally, Agency of the Year is ultimately a recognition of an entire organization. What do you hope this award says to the people at Deckel & Moneypenny who designed, built, managed and delivered this work? What do you want them to take away from it?

SD: Our team works so hard. They care so much about what we do. They aren't satisfied with good enough. It's so satisfying to receive external validation for their efforts.

For a full list of the 2026 ExSys Award winners, click here.