Hemisphere

Hemisphere was asked to devise and design a new cultural tourism guide that would open people’s eyes to Northwest arts and culture, improving place perceptions and measureably driving new overnight visitors to maximise the impact on the local economy.

The result was Prime – a new periodic culture magazine that has been extensively distributed to a target market of informed cultural consumers in response to enquiries generated by art house cinema and press advertising.

The design solution was to create a magazine predicated around positioning culture not just as a prime factor in the visit but also a prime part of Northwest life. Prime was conceived to be witty and informative, using the Guardian guide as inspiration for a suitably quirky tone of voice and adopting an an easy-to-use ‘Mr & Mrs Smith-style’ approach for selecting and presenting visitor information.

Evaluation of Prime has shown it to have influenced an estimated 850,000 visits to events or venues in the region, with over 200,000 visits estimated to have been directly generated by the magazine alone. This equates to an estimated visitor spend influenced by Prime of £67.5m, a particularly high economic impact figure due to its success in attracting an impressive 67% of visitors from outside the region.