New Thames Way identity, brochure design & handbook

Client: Oxford Diocese
Material: Brand identity,
launch brochure,
52 page route handbook/brochure,
& fully responsive website
designed to act as an app.

Oxford Diocese Thames Pilgrim Way

If you’ve arrived here after Googling ‘brochure design Birmingham’ and see that we’ve been working for an Oxford-based organisation, then hopefully that gives you an idea of the range of our clients. We design brochures for organisations up and down the country, from small start-ups to large public sector organisations like Oxford Diocese and Cambridge University. 

The Thames Path is the longest riverside walk in Europe. Based on this Path, in 2014, the Church of England Diocese of Oxford instigated the Thames Pilgrim Way – a spiritual resource for the Thames Path. The handbook for the Way identifies significant pilgrim places along the Path and has suggestions for reflections to accompany each day’s travel.

Oxford Diocese also needed a brand for the Pilgrim Way that could be used not only on publications associated with the route, but also as a waymark along the path itself. We created the brand shown above, tying together the concepts of water and pilgrimage, and creating a memorable and easy to use logo for printing and waymarking.

For the handbook/brochure, we were asked to work with a set of beautifully painted watercolours of the significant places along the route. We developed a graphical mapping system and a set of easily recognisable icons that complimented these watercolours, and gave those undertaking the pilgrimage clear directions and useful information for each days’ walk. 

The book has a lovely textured feel to it, and is printed on 100% recycled FSC stock. It also contains a QR code to take the reader directly to the Thames Pilgrim Way website, which we also designed. This is a responsive site that acts like a stand-alone app for the route (without going to the cost of actually building an app). Individual routes for each day can be downloaded and detailed information about each location is included.