Peruvian Hinterlands

This project...was weird. It was also a class project, but unlike VAMO and the Amotapes Reserve, it's still here mainly because the process behind it was annoying and painful and pretty terrible but the result was still. Suprisingly good? And I worked on it with people who would go on to become very good and close friends of mine – I'm pretty sure (in part) because this project genuinely made some of us cry. In front of our professor, during an important presentation, no less. Also, I got to rant about coffee fermentation and production in the highlands of Peru for like, 5 entire minutes, during a different presentation, to prove we had done our research. You bet your ass I'd done mine!

So, the project's goal was to design an exhibition space for tourism trade shows. Mainly to promote, diversify and decentralize Peruvian tourism from its usual destinations (Cusco, Cusco and...Cusco). We're speaking of both domestic and internaltional tourism here, so we needed to do some research about lesser known tourist attractions to both the national and international public – to highlight a sort of, renewed Peruvian tourism offering, to all potential interested parties. Unlike other projects in my design career, this was very interior design and maybe even slightly engineering focused (we consulted a couple architects and engineers for this!), since we had to consider a couple things I'd not had to think about very much at that point in my design education: realistic budgets, materials beyond plastic, paper or cardboard, and real life, human sized structures that can be put together, moved and put away with in a couple days at most. All very challenging stuff!

A couple other things about the exhibition space: Aside from showing as of yet unknown tourism destinations, it had to also educate the public about them, their history and their culture. This should be achieved by letting the visitors experience these aspects of Peru to convince them to travel there and see these beautiful newly publizised destinations. Since this is my beautiful land of Peru we're talking about, we decided we'd showcase the food, the music and the local arts. Especially the food. If you're not Peruvian, this is a sign from god for you to go find a Peruvian restaurant near you and try it. Try the ají. You will not regret it. If you are Peruvian, AYYYY!!

We also ended up selecting 3 new destinations: Paucartambo – a small town near Cusco (yes I know, still close to the biggest tourist attraction in the country but we wanted a safe one to convince people who already were planning on visiting the region to slightly broaden their horizons), Tingo Maria National reserve – a beautiful, isolated paradisiac natural reserve in the department of Huanuco (about 4 hours away from Lima, the city with the only international airport in the country and therefore not too hard to get there from it) and Piruro, Tantamayo – an amazing stone hewn archeological complex built in the pre-ceramic that remained inhabited until the conquest of the Inca Empire - also in Huanuco. Anyway, before we dove into the actual design or plans for the space, we had to construct a brand for this entire project.

The brand

Our main aim was to create a catchy and memorable name for the brand, as well as a slightly variable logo. We wanted to make it obvious we want tourists to visit Peru, and specifically lesser known areas of Peru. This took us embarrasingly long for a name that ended up sounding perfectly generic but also acceptably interesting to us: Peruvian Hinterlands. We chose not to translate it, because we did decide to more specifically target an international userbase and keep our branding and material in English. We did get some points docked from our final grade for this but I don't really regret it. Do you understand how hard it is to translate and localize a word like Hinterlands? I couldn't figure it out without making it sound even more like a Paddington Bear movie title. We were behind on our deliverables and needed to move on to visual design.

Visually, we wanted to reference the typography used in colonial Peru diaries about pre-colonial histories of the country, since most of the sites we selected actually showcased pre-colonial history and cultures. We also wanted to accompany our brand with some patterns inspired by textiles and thread patterns used in the Paucartambo Festival, one of the most important events from the area.

Aside from the patterns, we decided to use illustrations made with a collage/photobash style to represent the destinations we selected and use elements from all three in a more cohesive and direct way.

The exhibition space

The exhibition space was designed to fit within tourism trade shows open to both the general public and industry insiders.

Since we wanted to showcase three unknown tourist destinations, we divided the space to make sure each destination got one specific place for the visitors to taste, experience and observe their individual offerings.

On the first level of the space, there are: a model of a section of the Tantamayo Archaeological Complex people could walk into and touch, a stage for Scissors dancers (from Paucartambo) and a reception and meeting area for people interested in traveling or learning more about tourism in Peru.

The second floor of the exhibition contains a gastro-bar to try some food and (alcoholic!!) drinks from Tingo Maria. They are well known for their cocktails, apparently. There's also a big room used to showcase parts of the nature reserve of the same region on panoramic screen covering its entire surface.