Conamara: Wild at Heart

Following our work on the Wild Atlantic Way, Tandem completed the design of an outdoor interpretation
scheme for three ‘Conamara, Wild at Heart*’ driving
routes, a regional-specific off-shoot.

Coinciding, at times, with the Wild Atlantic Way, these routes also take
the visitor inland, presenting short, very manageable excursions with
the distinctly differing themes of coast, mountains and lakes.

The overall tourism offering was developed to encourage the
exploration of one of Ireland’s most loved regions. It was an outcome
of a collaborative process involving local stakeholders and resulting
with the ‘Connemara Infrastructure and Interpretation Plan 2012’. 

The project delivered orientation points at main gateways to the region, that introduce visitors to the unique flavour Conamara, and a series of discovery points that interpret individual locations with stories about landscape and geology, wildlife and nature, people and culture, history
and archaeology.

The overarching goal of the project was to reflect Conamara’s distinctiveness, culture, natural beauty and the core brand message
of ‘wild at heart’. 

As part of a larger design team that researched, designed and implemented the scheme, Tandem developed the overall design style that we rolled out across all interpretation panels. This included images research and commissioning new illustrations to complement the stories being told.

We were also responsible for the development of a map of the routes
to be incorporated into each of the panels. To aid visitor orientation
and comprehension of the whole offering we created a single,
simplified single map for all applications.

Conamara’s ‘Wild At Heart’ brand identity preceded the development
of the interpretation scheme and it was important that the design embraced this existing brand while still complimenting in keeping with
the Wild Atlantic Way brand identity and Interpretation Design Toolkit.

While our previous work on the Wild Atlantic Way helped to inform our approach, we ensured that the ‘Conamara, Wild at Heart’ scheme could
be identified as a distinct tourism product. 

See also, Wild Atlantic Way

The project delivered orientation points at main gateways to the region, that introduce visitors to the unique flavour Conamara, and a series of discovery points that interpret individual locations

*
During the course of the project we engaged with Irish Language issues and out of that came a decision to adopt the Irish form of the region’s name, hence ‘Conamara’ rather than ‘Connemara’.