Custom illustration makes this tourism website unique

This is the kind of project we love.

A client that's important to the community, is fun to work with and welcomes creativity, and has ideas of their own so is able to give good feedback and guidance but knows when to turn things over to the pros.

We just recently launched the new website for Halifax County Tourism, including creating a custom illustrated animated map that displays tourism sector information and provides visual site navigation.

For as long as we've been working with the tourism office, director Linda Shepperd has wished for some type of animation that would let visitors "drive" around the county to discover things. Cost, not wishing to use Flash, practicality of the feature, and several other factors always kept us from creating it.

On this site redesign, though, illustrator Erin Kipps Brown came up with a concept to treat the project like a theme park map.

This concept would prevent our having to make everything geographically correct while also eliminating the need to include everything but the kitchen sink in the illustration. Elements of the illustration can also help build the foundation for our sector marketing materials.

When a visitor clicks on an element in the illustration, a summary of that tourism sector is displayed. The visitor can either click through to that section of the site or close the information to view other sector info in the map.

The map is showcased on the site's homepage and new features will be added to it on a continuing basis. Since it's developed with html, css and javascript, it can be displayed on all devices and doesn't require special software to be installed on the site visitor's device. (Flash requires Flash Player to be installed on the visitors's computer or other device, and it can't even be installed on iPhone and iPad.)

Stay tuned for more information about the site redesign and brand buildout!