Place Branding | From location to destination

 Art has the ability to speak to everyone. Of course, all of the effects of the previous statement are variable ( i.e. everyone sees, is moved, reacts differently), but there is one key point. Visuals motivate us to action, and whether that action be dreaming or doing, it gets the wheels turning. I just read an interesting article in the NYT called Selling Paradise to the People. It is about a public art program that was present in British transportation venues for almost a century. The purpose of the program was to promote travel. What a wild idea, a public art program that also acts as a promotional tool for travel on the British public transportation system. After reading this, I was impressed by the ingenuity of this program and what it can teach us about place branding. What an amazing way to promote a local area, while providing culture and iconography that will has been around for a century and will most likely last another.

These posters were located in all veins of public transportation, and represented areas that could be reached via public transit. My favorite lines of the article are:

Once the province of the wealthy and the uncommonly adventurous, escapist travel became available to the masses in the 20th century, as increasingly efficient modes of transportation and greater amounts of leisure time made the vacation seem an inalienable human right. This in turn spawned a tremendous culture of visual persuasion, with endless TV commercials, magazine ads and billboards promising paradise to the harried and careworn.

Maybe it is just me, but this is fascinating. Vacation as an inalienable human right? Powerful stuff, right? Furthermore,  what we can see in this program is the burgeoning of place branding via affordable mass travel—which provided a way to get to places that had been unattainable for the everyday man in the past. Mass transit opened up the idea of travel for pleasure, and therefore gave places a venue to present themselves as a destination. Once this option was on the table, it meant that places needed a way to distinguish themselves to a new crowd of enthusiastic adventurers—a brand. It also gives us a lesson in what makes a place desirable. Not only does something have to have  a good poster, the poster must ring true once the visitor gets there. Smash these concepts all together and you have a study in place branding, in a venue  that you wouldn’t have expected (the subway tunnels under London).

Tagged: art, article, culture, London, perception, Place brand, public transportation, tourism