Alpine Walks offer bespoke trekking holidays for individuals and groups across the European Alps, Italian Dolomites and the Abruzzi region of Italy. The business is run by Duncan Boar an ex-war veteran and expert mountain guide.
I was contacted by Duncan to provide a logo and web design proposal for his established trekking business. Of the three freelancer designers he’d approached, he decided to work with me based on my ideas and approach.
One of the first tasks was to create a new business name. The existing name ‘Tough Mountain’ no longer fitted his goals due to its serious mountaineering message.
So with this in mind, Duncan provided a handful of starting phrases to which we selected suitable keywords. I then plugged these terms into Shopify’s business name generator to create a range of suitable business and URL suggestions. We settled on Alpine Walks and MyAlpineWalks for the URL.
The next step was to create a logo design to set the feel for the website. Duncan had mentioned he wanted Alpine Walks to be perceived as warm, friendly and nature loving. I tried to avoid literal images of mountains so instead focused on elements used in mountaineering and walking.
Duncan was already running his trekking business under another name. However the website, although rich with content, didn’t have any branding, have the right messaging, look-and-feel or have a good SEO plan.
The requirement for the new site was to:
My first task was to map out a site plan and put together some rough website wireframes of how the site architecture would work.
One of the challenges was creating the ‘right’ e-commerce booking system. I experimented with several WordPress plugins, one of which was a specific holiday tour extension. However, this proved to be more extensive than we needed. In the end I chose the simpler WooCommerce plugin and created an online shop style page to deliver Duncan’s walking tours.
As far as design and styling went, I predominantly used the burnt orange colour and also added a rough-edged container (to house text sections) to complement the distressed feel of the logo.
The combination of Duncan’s stunning photographic images and the warm colours, significantly improve his chances of building a recognisable brand in this competitive sector.
Duncan Boar, Alpine Walks Owner
