The Myth of “Best Practices”

In exhibition projects, we hear “best practices” all the time. The phrase sounds reassuring. Proven. Settled. As if someone out there has already figured out the very best way.

But it’s not true.

The underlying concept is useful. Tracking what has worked for others in the past can give teams a shared base language. Clients, designers, and fabricators can all point to it and feel aligned as a starting point. It feels like accumulated wisdom. In many ways, it is.

The misleading part is the first word: best practices are not necessarily the best solutions. They are just the most commonly successful ones.

They come from experience, repetition, and what tends to work across many projects. That’s why they drift toward average. They favor what is repeatable, low-risk, and adaptable across different budgets, schedules, and team structures.

Over time, anything ambitious or experimental gets filtered out. Anything unusual becomes harder to defend. What remains is what works reliably and predictably.

Best practices are very useful. They help teams avoid mistakes, make decisions faster, and keep projects stable. But on their own, they rarely lead to truly memorable or innovative exhibitions.

If you want to do something special, you have to take risks and avoid settling for average.

Here’s the thing:

Best practices are not the ceiling. They are the floor.

Use them to avoid failure. But then decide how far beyond them you want to go.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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Best practices. In exhibition design, these are often assumed to be the best possible methods, offering confidence and shared direction for teams. In reality, they are usually only the most consistently successful approaches (reliable, repeatable, low-risk). They provide a strong starting point, but teams should think beyond them to create the most distinctive, memorable (truly “best”) exhibitions.