Oneida County Tourism Travel Guide

Oneida County Tourism, is a nonprofit organization located in Upstate New York. The organization’s mission supports the community by building the areas economy through tourism, special events, yearly attractions, and promoting surrounding counties.

Project Objective
Oneida County Tourism seeks to effectively market and highlight the area’s attractions and seasonal activities by creating a market-driven promotional guide. The purpose of the guide is to heighten public awareness of the area’s assets, boost tourism, and encourage new and repeated visits that spur education and exploration of this Upstate New York region. The uniqueness of this guide needs to encourage its keepsake, and increase its value as a regional resource through a cohesive message delivered in its 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 further insight behind the design, our Case Study: Designing Oneida County’s Travel Guide outlines specific goals that shaped the new guide. As the design of the guide book unfolded, we expanded the number of pages by eight to accommodate the new design. The 64-page guide started with a template design. Once approved by Tourism, we laid out the feature pages, chose photos, added factoids, charts, ads, and facilitated corrections and revisions during it’s production. For the cover we marked the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment—this gave women the right to vote. This was chosen because Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a women’s right activist, wrote under the pseudonym “Sunflower.” We used a photograph of sunflowers (iconic of the women’s movement) to mark this historical anniversary. 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.

In 2020, Graphic Design USA, a trade publication for graphic design professionals, recognized IntreXDesign & Associates with an award for the Official 2020 Oneida County Travel Guide. As a recipient of the award, the logo was printed in their 200-page GDUSA Design Annual.