PLACE BRANDING THE UK’s FIRST SELF-DESIGNATED LANDSCAPE
In 2021 The South Pennines Park became the first self-designated landscape in the UK. It has been a huge project with many different local authorities, groups, individuals and communities coming together under the guidance and leadership of The South Pennines Park Trust. I led brand workshops, talks and information gathering before bring all the elements together to create the brand, tone of voice, logos, animations, infographics, documents & website.
It is an area I know and love well, from many walks and rides on my mountain bike, and living in the area for many years.
This has been a long project, and has had a few different stages to get it where it is today. I have worked with all the different teams involved, and the last piece of work is to get the Park to launch involved creating an holistic brand for the project. This is it.
The brand takes from the original artwork of the Twite (a tiny bird which the South Pennines is the only home to in the UK) originally created by artist Angela Smyth. The twite painting by Angela became a little iconic in stage 1 of the project , so I was simplified it down to become part of the logo and brand as a whole.
The brand is also made up of elements of the rugged landscape that is unique to the area – steep imposing hills, mills, stone houses & factories, and framed them all together to create a brand with many elements that is flexible to use across many disciplines.
The colour palette was also taken directly from the landscape – from the purple of the heather in Autumn to the vivid greens of the fields in Spring.
ANIMATED LOGO
The logo was always designed to be versatile. From the beginning I had an animated version in mind – for film, intros, presentations & social media. I worked together with my friend Dan Ambler of 3D State to bring the logo to life from the brand elements.
INFOGRAPHICS
Infographics for reports and displays
Full Website Design & Build at – www.southpenninespark.org
Built with my friend & colleague Simon Waldren
Previous work to bring the region to the point of being able to move to a designated landscape
Stage 1 of Branding The South Pennines
I live in the wild, beautiful, rugged place that is The South Pennines. Home of The Brontes, the CoOperative Movement, over 40 micro Breweries, hundreds of miles of bridleways and footpaths, artists, makers and people who generally like to take life by the scruff of the neck. It’s a place that until recently didn’t have a name – more “That bit in between The Yorkshire Dales & The Peak District”. But it really is unique. And the people here really are something else! Feisty, no nonsense and often a bit eccentric.
Pennine Prospects and then later The South Penniens Park Trust were charged with bringing the area to the public’s interest, to give it a place name, identify its uniqueness, and create a brand, website and material to support this. And I was asked to work with them.
I worked alongside artist Angela Smyth to create the brand, which went across festivals, brochures, posters, display boards in fact everything that came from the project. The centre of the whole project came from Angela’s huge 10ft map she painted of the area, which now resides as a ceramic wall in Hebden Bridge, with smaller versions dotted across the area.
FULL WEBSITE BUILD AT WWW.SOUTHPENNINES.CO.UK
BANNERS
Elements Undertaken:
Branding, design, website, photography, illustration, copywriting, event coordination.
VISITOR GUIDE
To launch The South Pennines Walk & Ride Festival (a big part of the Pennine Prospects brand) we even put together an event as part of the work I did on The South Pennines Walk & Ride Festival – The Great Pie Tweed Race. The idea was to get more people on bikes in the area. It started small and ran 4 times, with even a night time Christmas version. Each time it got bigger until there were around 80 riders taking part.
This was the first time we did it. A whole amazing event which cost £35 to put on – and a lot of volunteers. We then covered it through the #30daysofbiking project, which got the whole project a worldwide audience. Priceless.