Trade shows are the only design discipline I know where the finished work has a shelf life measured in days.

You spend months on drawings, budgets, fabrication, and freight. The thing goes up overnight. It lives for three days on a concrete floor under bad lighting. Then it comes down and goes into a crate.

I used to find that depressing. Now I think it is the whole point. The temporary stuff teaches you to be decisive. There is no version two. There is no patch release. It either works on Tuesday morning at 9am or it does not.

Twenty-five years in, the things I am proudest of are mostly gone. A few stuck. That ratio seems about right.