Part 2 The Modern Industrial Revolution

Why are some businesses impacted more than others?

The revolution means that customers shop in different ways. They check out a web site, a Google+ page, a Google Tour and might even compare prices whilst looking in your shop window.

This means that retail and services need to ‘integrate fully their physical stores, on line sites and other channels such as social media coherently’, in other words improve their on-line activity including social media. See the UK Centre for Retail Research (http://www.retailresearch.org/retail2018.php)

We have come across towns in traditional tourist hot spots which are struggling to survive, whilst others are doing very well thank you. The best high street retailers attract tourists and shoppers and these days these retailers do that by going on-line and working the web.

Retailers have an on-line presence whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not. No web site, and no customer interaction through social media or email, means a poor web presence in comparison to others. It doesn’t do justice to their shop or their town (although no amount of web tech will give you a sale if you are trying to sell goods no one wants to buy of course).

And speaking of tradesmen, a colleague of mine said that he was looking for a plumber, but ‘some of them don’t EVEN have a website’. Note the language ‘don’t EVEN have a web site’. He ‘just wanted to know more about them’ before contacting them. In this day and age you are expected to ‘communicate’ and reach out to potential customers and that EVEN includes tradesmen.

People make decisions about whether to visit a town by what is presented on the web. Less and less do they visit through loyalty to a specific business. If they don’t see what they want, they won’t come. There can never be too much information out there.

The question is – is the high street doomed or will it contract a little or will it adapt? See Part 3

Creating a Tourist Trail Map – Part 4, Printing versus Digital Technology

There are some downsides to printed advertising material:

• it’s almost throw away,
• it can’t be updated without reprinting,
• the quantity to be printed can be an issue (how many is too few, how many is too many?)
• it uses resources,
• your customers/target audience have to be sent or be in the area ‘by chance’ to pick up your materials (hence the need to distribute).

The upsides to printed advertising material include:

• In many circumstances it’s a reliable and practicable method of getting your points across,
• It’s nice for people to hold in their hands,
• It’s portable and readily accessible.

So it’s definitely a very useful tool amongst many others for advertising.

More and more people are likely to be holding mobile phones or tablets in their hands – wherever they happen to be. So can you take advantage of that?

Yes. We took the bold decision to put our map on the web and make it interactive – with pop out information and web site links. http://sciarts.co.uk/Art_Map/Cmap.html

Digital technology counterbalances the disadvantages of the print version. And indeed people can plan their visit before they even come to your area and they don’t have to pick up a map. They may even be encouraged to visit, when they would not have done so before.

You will need someone to host the map on the internet of course, and someone to code it up for you. It really is the way to go and we’ve had great feedback on ours.

And finally we also put a QR code on the printed leaflet, so anyone can access the interactive version too on their mobile or tablet.

Happy planning, happy designing and happy trailing!

www.sciarts.co.uk

Creating a Tourist Trail Map – Part 3, The design and visual persuasion

Your graphic design should use visual persuasion to attract the passer-by to your leaflet in the stand and again to attract them to look at it when they finally pick it up off the stand. You need to know what colours and fonts to use for which purpose, and what design to use to match to the people that you want to attract.

When designing your leaflet try to use a variety of visual and psychological devices. For our leaflet we wanted to get away from all the cliched traditional pictures of landscapes and items for sale – we wanted to associate the outdoors with the main subject of the leaflet, to add enthusiasm and fun, and to stand out from the crowd.

Yellow is a bright and happy colour, and any use of red tends to be eye-catching. So in order to be different and eye-catching we used a female walker in a red jacket on our cover which is predominantly yellow. And it’s already having an impact!

We took inspiration from the drawings in a book we found in a second hand shop, called ‘Songs of Near and Far Away’ illustrated and written by E Richardson, and printed in 1900. We used the graphical style but interpreted it in a contemporary way. The style is consistent with the period of the architecture. Here we tried not to over design or over finesse the art work. It’s horses for courses.

Once you have got it altogether for the printers – proof read, proof read and proof read again!

Next up – printing versus modern technology – the future of your advertising.

www.sciarts.co.uk

Creating a Tourist Trail Map - Part 2, How to get started.

Your first question will most likely be ‘Do it all yourself?’ or ‘Do you get someone in to do some or all of it?’.

If you do most of the donkey work, i.e. speaking to the sponsors of your map to get their buy in, collecting their money and proof reading the final version then this will help keep the costs down. However always try to find someone with a track record in this sort of thing to help you out – at least with the graphic art, design, colouring, type setting and marketing style.

You also need to make sure you have enough money from your sponsors to cover the costs of professional printing, your graphic design and the distribution – if you are having it distributed. Take care, since in the UK, distribution costs attract VAT.

Some sponsors may pay for featured adverts and others will be happy with a ‘gazetteer’ entry.

You will need to decide on the type of distribution route – it’s a bit like a bus route. Ask your distributer about this. We used A-Ha as our distributer and they were very helpful.

In terms of printing you need to be careful about allowances for folding, colours and any trim and bleed issues of the colour. We used H&H Reeds for our printing, who were also very helpful. We were there for the final colour selection and the printing.

At this stage it is all about the planning and you may be surprised at how much time this eats up. Be prepared!

Next Up – The art work – Visual Persuasion

Creating a Tourist Trail Map – Part 1, Introduction

If you are a business owner or an individual and you want a tourist trail map for your town or area, what do you need to do? How do you ensure it will be a success and drive people to your area?

To whet your appetite here is a short (10 second) animation of the final print version of a tourist trail that we ourselves put together.

Just how do you overcome the challenges of getting a large group of people together to sponsor the project, how do you get the right graphics, how do you manage the costs? We will tackle all these in our short series of blogs.

Stay tuned.

www.sciarts.co.uk