ABOUT

The London Borough of Hillingdon (LBH) is the western-most borough in Greater
London and second largest of London's 32 boroughs.

Our brief from Hillingdon was centred around working in particular with small,
independent business, shoppers and local residents to find the best way to preserve
and enhance these centres as more retail, hospitality and other services reopened in
line with Covid-19 Government regulations and guidance and to create a safe and
enjoyable return to Hillingdon High Streets, contributing positively to the local
economy.

We were asked to take a key role in identifying the positive attributes and local features
that each town centre location could build on to create and sustain a competitive
advantage whilst also encouraging residents and visitors to spend locally.

We then needed to create a platform for design and communications that would be the cornerstone of both our communications promoting a return to Hillingdon High Streets, but also could be used by multiple partners as they delivered other parts of the reopening programme.

Mediums:
Brand identity and Design Systems, marketing collateral, Tote Bags, local outdoor activity.

Concept:
We were fortunate to have a lead designer in the agency brought up in – and still living in – Hillingdon, and he brought both a passion and local knowledge that was vital to the success of the campaign. We also embarked on a detailed site visit across the 15 High Streets the Borough had selected for the campaign, collating comprehensive location imagery and noting key landmarks and sites of interest.

Using both our local knowledge and the outputs from this research, we delivered a campaign idea that was unique to Hillingdon. After agreeing an illustrative style with the LBH team, we developed 15 different identities and design systems for each of the separate High Streets across the London Borough of Hillingdon.

In each location we found a significant local High Street feature that local residents would instantly recognise and then illustrated it in the campaign style. Each location was given its own colour combination within the agreed campaign palette so each location emerged with a unique and individual core asset within the overall campaign structure and design system.

Execution:
We took the 15 individual core elements and developed collateral for each High Street location to encourage visits and a return to the community. Sometimes this took the form of promotional collateral – the Tote Bags proved a particular hit, and quite collectable – while we also developed multiple pieces of communication collateral promoting a series of events and activities across the borough. We worked in tandem with a specialist High Street retail activation agency who organised the events which we then developed communication tools to promote.

We also worked closely with the digital communications team at Hillingdon, providing social media cards, digital assets and digital templates for targeted and tactical messaging across the campaign, as well as web assets.

Results:
The campaign has become the core design system for the high streets across Hillingdon and was successfully applied and employed not just by Whistlejacket but by a variety of other communication partners across the borough, as well as internal teams at the local authority.

Such was the success of the programme that the original time frame of the work was extended several times, with a number of rounds of new work, to ensure local businesses benefitted from the momentum that the campaign was building.

Project credits:
Partner (Project Management): Richard Morris
Project Manager: Kayleigh Dibbens
Creative Direction/Designer/Illustrator: Dan Ayris
Designer: Kathy Kielty
Designer: Sid Gurung
Designer: George Messer
Artwork: Rich Wilmott