TUESDAY 23 OCT 2012 10:47 AM

CORNWALL TOWN TO REBRAND WITH CROWD-SOURCED DESIGN

Tourism rebrands are sweeping the nation as English towns attempt to attract more homegrown tourism. The latest of which is a little 800-year-old Cornish cattle market town and the most southerly town in Great Britain – Helston.

The Helston rebrand campaign is a bit different from those of recent news from Lyme Regis, Tavistock or Gravesend. It involves a crowd-sourced poll in which residents and others can vote on their favourite of six identities. Each is designed by Ki Design, a Cornwall-based branding agency, and has its own strapline and iconography based on features of Helston’s character.

The project sought to include Helston residents’ opinions from the outset, asking surveyed participants to describe the town in three words. The business improvement partnership in the town has asked 12 traders to display their chosen branding in their store windows to encourage customers to vote for their favourite identity.

Jonathan Birkett, manager of the town centre, says, “We are trying to bring a bit of fun to the process, but it has a serious and important outcome. We want the new town brand to symbolise Helston's future while respecting its heritage. Most importantly, we want the community to decide how we showcase our unique identity.”

Predictably, there was mixed reception to the redesign. Townspeople discussed the graphic and typographic representation of the town, but the final say will go to the 5,000 members of the public who vote for the new brand.

To read about other tourism-based rebrands, see the following links:

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/news/3870-mermaid-debate-reverberates-through-dorset-coastal-destination

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/news/3922-gravesend-fields-proposal-for-tourism-boosting-name-change

http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/news/4018-rebranding-devon-town-tavistock-founded-974-ad