The Saint Patrick’s Trail is part of one of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board’s five signature projects that were identified as being those with the greatest potential for tourism growth in Northern Ireland. They were keen to create something around Saint Patrick, and christian heritage in general, that could potentially emulate the popularity of El Camino de Santiago in Spain. The brief was to mark various relevant sites along a route that runs from Bangor to Armagh, through Newry and Downpatrick. The idea behind all the agency’s NITB work was to tell the stories of the people and the land – this also applied to this project. So in principal we put proposed that each site had it’s own feature sign made from natural locally sourced materials and would tell the story of that site. Each sign would look the same and would map its position to the neighbouring sites on the trail and each would contain a piece of engagement built in to each sign that would drive the ‘pilgrims’ to each site (and each sign) on the trail.

 
The 4 signage formats used throughout the trail.

 
The Saint Patrick’s Trail map that complemented the signage.

 
The engagement part of the signage that worked with the Trail ‘Passport’.

All ©2010 AV Browne