The price of acrylic on the day .. smells fishy.

You've got to hand it to the far east; they know how to hike the price of acrylic.

For future reference you throw 3D televisions at the west faster than your average ninja hurls a shuriken, and Bob's your uncle - you get the uncontrollable desire to start melting any spare acrylic down into ingots and lock them away in a fire proof safe.

Oddly enough the 3D screens are not made from normal acrylic. They do, however, require huge amounts of the raw chemical used in acrylic manufacturing which has caused the world acrylic price to spike. This has placed unprecedented pressure on the companies in the acrylic display market as their customers expect the highest quality and the best price.

There are options, magnetic acrylic display blocks could become poly carbonate display blocks. Poly carbonate has very similar properties to acrylic - it comes in sheets and can be heat bent. The sudden shift to P/C could then effect the price of that too and then we'll be trying to use ice (which could work well in the frozen food industry).

Euro Shop Exhibition Dusseldorf

One key event on the display systems calendar was earlier this year at the Euroshop Trade Fair in Dusseldorf, Germany. Companies from all over the world came together to show off their innovations and concepts in the world of product placement.

If you were prepared to walk around all the 20+ halls which make up Messe, you could find a display system for pretty much any application.

Orchard were over there for 3 days helping out the lads at Tecnostyl who had a prime spot display stand right in the entrance to one of the main halls.

Quite a noticeable proportion of the weird and wonderful creations people had devised involved 3D in one form or another.

Depth perspective when presenting products on screen or virtually seems to be the in-thing; providing a novelty factor which draws a crowd if nothing else. I guess the whole point is to get people looking at your product, 3D makes that almost too easy.

Failing 3D, good old fashioned illumination is always a crowd-pleaser. LED poster displays were pretty much everywhere and you had to admit they were effective - guiding your eyes and telling a story at the same time.

Even though none were like the artistic light boxes used for photography or tracing they still pack a visual punch with colourful printed acetate graphics.