The challenges of destination branding

Working on a project like Visit Britain is both thrilling and terrifying. You want to create something award-winningly good because it’s for your country and you want it to be popular (even though you know this isn’t possible).

It is especially challenging because Britain is composed of not one, but four different nations; England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each nation offers unique, culturally distinct experiences, which is true even at a local level; for example, Manchester is culturally different to Liverpool even though the two cities are only 55 kilometres apart. This complexity also meant there were many ‘gatekeepers’ to the project, which is always an efficient filter for removing a great idea from the mix.

Our mission was to create a brand idea and architecture which would promote Britain as a whole and support tourism to the four nations; the regions, cities, towns and villages and the experiences and attractions they contain. The brand had to communicate the spirit of Britain with an up-beat and colourful personality.

Uniting the Kingdom

Creative exploration began with the visual clichés associated with Britain, including the Union Jack flag. As one of the world’s most recognisable flags it has inspired many distinctive graphic works over the years. Additionally, the countries of Britain are traditionally represented by flowers; a rose for England; a daffodil for Wales; a thistle for Scotland; and a flax flower for Northern Ireland.

To unite these symbols, we created the Union Jack butterfly logo. The butterfly represents how a tourist can effortlessly travel across Britain and experience the diversity of each nation.  It also naturally connects with the flower of each nation. The butterfly and flowers are stylised using an informal hand-painted brushstroke style.

Flexible brand architecture

By italicising the word ‘Visit’ within ‘Visit Britain’ we create a typographic prefix which could be used alongside each nation, region, town or experience. We selected Richmond Display as the primary font for all applications; a beautiful and classic serif suggesting ‘Britishness’ which was created by renowned English type designer Matthew Carter who has been described as “the most widely read man in the world” on account of the amount of text set in typefaces he has designed.

Our Visit Britain butterfly logo was made available in two colour formats; a multicoloured version (composed of colours from each nation) used to promote Britain as a whole; and a simpler red, white and blue version which could be used in dual-branded lock-ups. The butterfly icon could also be used without text in a flexible relationship with each Nation’s flower logo.

The one that got away

The Visit Britain project was concluded in May of 2001 and I think of the ideas as one of my favourites as a designer and a project I am particularly proud of. It is also one of my biggest disappointments, because for various internal political reasons our client was unable to run with the work. However, it was not entirely in vain as our work on brand strategy and positioning helped to shape the direction of Visit Britain and of tourism to the United Kingdom.