rec ready nh

Empowering outdoor recreation to grow communities and economies

Now everyone – from a town official planning a hiking trail to a mom who wants a new bike lane – can bring more outdoor recreation to their community.

Illustration of people hiking in a paint-by-numbers style

Illustration of a man and girl at a cafe table in a paint-by-numbers style

Services
Art Direction
Content Strategy
Copywriting & Editing
Illustration
Logo Design
Naming
Visual Identity
Website User Experience & Interface

Ultravirgo project team
Marina Csomor
Patrick Durgin-Bruce

Collaborators
Tool content: CRO Planning & Design
Logo: Christopher Caldwell
Site dev: SilverTech
‍

New Hampshire is known for its White Mountains, scenic highways, covered bridges, and coastal towns. These are recreation destinations for visitors from both in state and out. But the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs knows outdoor recreation should thrive beyond tourist hotspots. This department works to enhance economic vitality across New Hampshire, recognizing that its natural beauty and vast outdoor resources are the foundation of the state’s economy.

CHALLENGE

The BEA team wanted to ensure that outdoor recreation is accessible to all New Hampshire communities by creating a digital guidebook for assessing, planning, building, and sustaining local outdoor recreation projects like community parks and hiking trails. CRO Planning & Design was enlisted to craft each of the guide’s instructional tools, which walk users through the entire development process, from assessing conditions, to designing amenities, to analyzing impact. It was our job to create a dynamic visual identity for the guide and design a website that made it easy for users to find the right tools for bringing their projects to life.

Key Insight

With over 20 content-heavy tools planned, we determined that the guidebook needed to have multiple points of entry in order to maximize utility and achieve inclusivity. Whether trying to get a dream project off the ground, or discovering one essential tool to solve a problem, each user must feel fully empowered to realize local infrastructure.

THE BIG IDEA

Your community is your canvas

Illustration of a person hiking in the snow in a paint-by-numbers style

illustration in a paint-by-numbers style

Anyone can create

Because the guidebook — which we named Rec Ready NH — was intended to empower, we developed a visual identity inspired by paint-by-numbers kits and vintage tourism posters to illustrate to users that their community is their canvas. Referencing pictures of real New Hampshire sights, we created patchwork outdoor scenes of people and places — some colored in with rich hues and others containing outlines waiting to be filled.

Illustration of a man with binoculars in a paint-by-numbers style

Illustration of a man fishing in a paint-by-numbers style

illustration of people in the forest in a paint-by-numbers style

Making deep content easy to navigate

The CRO team created 21 practical tools, organized by phase, to walk users step by step through the process of building an outdoor recreation project. Knowing that some users would want to jump straight to the tools most relevant for their project, we helped CRO develop “Project Packs” that organized the tools by common project types, like recreation master plans and trails. On the site’s home page and main menu, users have the option to explore the tools either way, according to need — step by step or by project type. Additionally, we supported the CRO team by writing overview copy, including friendly and digestible introductions and callouts to pair with their in-depth information.

See the site

“Working with Ultravirgo was an exceptional experience. They transformed a complex, content-rich concept into a cohesive, modern brand with beautiful print and digital design. The website is intuitive and engaging, turning comprehensive information into an easy-to-use planning resource. The guide is now recognized as one of the industry’s best planning tools.”

Janel Lawton 
Director, Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry DevelopmentNew Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs

Building a brand to promote across media

We developed a distinctive Rec Ready NH logo not only for use on the site, but across promotional materials as well. We designed stickers, notebooks, and bookmarks in the same look and feel for the BEA to use when introducing the toolkit to community members across the state, each produced in a series of 4 featuring the four seasons. Postcards were printed with paint-by-numbers art that you could color yourself.

Photo of a hand holding a phone with a social media post on the screen.

Photo os a hand holding a postcard with an illustration in a paint-by-numbers style

Hand holding two notebooks with illustrations on the covers.

spcail media post with an illustration and list of community benefits.

Illustration of a playground in a paint-by-numbers style.

Stickers on the rear window of a car for Rec Ready NH case study.

IMPACT

Setting the standard

The guide was quickly adopted across the industry – even beyond New Hampshire – with multiple organizations using it both to plan individual projects and to set processes within their state.

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