Located in the heart of Tasmania, the Meander Valley is a lush region of the island that has supported a thriving agricultural industry for generations. The area was established as a new municipality 32 years ago, with the aim of uniting a region of dispersed and disconnected villages, but its name never stuck.

Despite having much to offer across the region, the community struggled to benefit from the intended unifying sense of identity. Partnering with the Meander Valley Council, studio For the People is seeking to change that by establishing a distinctive place brand for the region which has the idea of ‘fertile ground’ at its heart.

“Residents were more attached to the identity of their local town and, even today, Meander Valley is missing from most of the maps,” says Patrick Carroll, creative director of For the People. “Our role was to provide a strong presence and unified identity for the communities within the Meander Valley, helping residents form a sense of local pride and find their common ground.”

Carroll and his team spent weeks in Tasmania engaging with the local audience and considering the direction of a new place brand that would celebrate the region’s abundance, while tying the community closer to the area.

The studio talked to residents and conducted interviews to cover a spectrum of topics such as local business, tourism, youth and ambitions for the future. Alongside visiting the area’s cafés, shops and galleries, enjoying the natural beauty of the river and the bush, they even visited growers’ club meetings, went line dancing and attended a music rehearsal in an old church.

“Having the time to not only ‘visit’ a place, but be immersed, welcomed and accepted into the lives of the people who live there gave us a level of understanding that you never get when you’re behind a desk or just driving through,” says Carroll.

“Place brands are not just about creating a vision for the future, but celebrating the past,” he adds. “Whether it’s learning how the landscape was formed, listening to the stories of the Pallittorre people (the Traditional Owners of the land), or leaning into the deep-rooted history of agriculture – Meander Valley had a rich and varied past.”

The studio focused on unearthing stories, insights and localisms that felt as true to the place in the past as they do today, Carroll says. “The logo for the place brand is inspired by the original logos of individual towns, using these historic references to create something that feels familiar, yet fit for Meander Valley’s future.”

Other references from local visual culture include a series of patchwork grids and thread-like patterns that reference a famous four-panel tapestry made collaboratively by over 300 locals, while the Meander Valley typeface was based on farmgate lettering that the team noticed dotted along the highway. Created in-house, it was inspired “by the not-quite-right style of these handmade and sign-painted letters,” says Carroll.

“It’s important in our approach to place branding that the community is empowered to create with it themselves,” he adds. “This necessitates using open source typefaces that can be shared and used by anyone without concern for licensing, and so bespoke typefaces make this easy to achieve.”

At the core of the identity is the unifying idea of ‘fertile ground’, which enabled the studio to celebrate “the diversity of people, experiences, and businesses growing across the valley, turning their fertile patch of land into a rich patchwork of abundance,” says Carroll. “It gave them a tool to tell any story they wanted, whilst remaining cohesive to the collective identity of place.”

Carroll says that there is a pressure on place brand projects that designers don’t necessarily get with commercial brands. “You’re creating an identity for someone’s home – a place they already have a strong and usually unwavering perception of. But that’s also what makes these projects so fulfilling, especially when you see them embraced by the community and the client in the way the work for Meander Valley has been.”

The place brand has only recently launched, but according to Carroll the community is already making use of the guidelines and implementing the identity across hiking signage, event posters and local guides. “Place brands are a long-term process of adaptation and ownership, so we’re excited to see it continue to grow and evolve over time.”

forthepeople.agency