Belomorie: Maps

MURMANSK OBLAST, RUSSIA

Belomorie: Maps

Tersky Coast & Kandalaksha embraced by the wayfinding system

The Tersky Coast is the southernmost border of the Murmanskaya Oblast that is washed by the White Sea and had always been appealing for the lovers of the northern aesthetics, fishing and hiking. Particularly helpful is the location of the place, that you can get to from Moscow and St.Petersburg by car, leaving Karelia behind. Tourists visit Kandalaksha, the port transport city hub, however not always diving further, where the true northern magic awaits. We had been asked to work under the idea of their cluster brand unification.

Client: Murmansk Cluster Development Center

Work: Research, branding, design, maps, wayfinding, illustrations

2017 … 2018

Here we show our most lovely part of design part: the map. And when we speak about map — that is not only design. It's a communication process and the wonderful occasion to spend time with the local team and collect all the interesting together.

There are 3 maps in total. The general one for the whole territoty — the long one. And two more of a casual size: one for Kandalaksha and one for Umba — for the main settlements with higher density of interest. All the maps had been translated to english.

The adventure happen to be long enough, so does the map

Please, have a look at the details. All the drawings had been made unique. So we'd call this map a huge illustration, that you can explore almost endlessley. Not to mention, that it is made for wayfinding purposes.

Kandalaksha and Umba maps

Settlement maps had been made separately and serve both for wayfinding purposes and just decoration.

Together from skratch

Process of creating maps in terms of design is only the top of iceberg. It all begins on communicating with the residents and deciding what accents should be marked and why. As always, we always start working together with entrepreneurs. That's a successful start for a long project ride.

The meeting was useful. We learnt a lot about the places around and were planning to come for hiking later

Family archive

We always print every map we created and put it in the family archive, yet our friends tend to nag and we give them maps as a presents usually, so we have to print them once again. It's a must to test how the maps look, many errors that were hiding on a screen, can't withstand a printing process, thus immediately show up.

Online maps

When we gathered all the information we put it on the interactive map and invited all the collaborants to make edits and changes. Then, when everything was approved we made it to the design itself. Have a look yourself.