Oneida County Tourism, is a nonprofit organization located in Upstate New York. Their mission supports tourism, special events, yearly attractions, and promoting surrounding counties.

Project Objective
Oneida County Tourism seeks to market and highlight the area’s attractions and seasonal activities by creating a market-driven promotional guide. The purpose of the guide is to raise public awareness, boost tourism, and encourage repeat visits within this Upstate New York region. The uniqueness of this guide should encourage its keepsake. The guide should become a regional resource with a cohesive message delivered in tone, photography, and featured articles.

Our Process and Creative Approach
The initial guide book started with some goals: add more photos, add local factoids, and include an area that supports our local recruiters.

For more insight on this project read our Case Study: Designing Oneida County’s Travel Guide. It outlines specific goals that shaped the new guide.

Solution
As the design of the guide book unfolded, eight additional pages help expand the guide to 64-pages in total. Proposing the design to Tourism became the next step. With their approval, the feature pages were laid out. Choosing photos, adding factoids, ads, and charts, completed the design. Corrections and revisions were reviewed and changes made throughout its production.

On the cover we marked the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment—this gave women the right to vote. We used a photograph of sunflowers (iconic of the women’s movement) to mark this historical anniversary. The photo was synonymous with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a women’s right activist, wrote under the pseudonym “Sunflower.” . This launched a selfie campaign and we encouraged visitors to participate in this year’s anniversary.

The Result
At the onset of this project, we aimed to have this guide become a dual piece that served the community and tourist alike. The new design also had to be functional so the content was easy to find. Plus include social media hashtags sprinkled throughout the guide to encourage community participation. We achieved all three.