What’s On ® Ireland

Back in 2005, my wife and I created a tourism destination guide entitled What’s On ® Connemara. Located in the West of Ireland, Connemara is a popular tourism destination that sees an influx of visitors numbering in the thousands annually. We saw a need to provide local, practical, and timely information to visitors so they could get the most out of their holiday experience.

In terms of its structure, a fixed-page format, the guide had to make very efficient use of limited space. We wanted the content to be practical and informative, but also colourful and eye-catching in order to highlight the natural beauty of the area, thus we feature original photography throughout the guide.

The front cover, being the most important aspect, design-wise, is where we really aim to showcase the natural beauty of the region, we achieved this by forgoing commercial interests and took the decision early on to rid the cover of unnecessary advertising and copy, to give it a more simple, non-commercial feel.

In 2013, we upgraded the look and feel of the guide with a more modern and minimal approach to the design. While the old design looked well, we felt that the volume of information packed throughout the pages made the guide feel cramped and less reader-friendly, and therefore we took the decision to make more use of white space where possible and increased our page count, much to delight of our readers and participating businesses. It continues to evolve.