Heritage Hounds is a hypothetical event created for my final project in my Graphic Design course this past semester. It is a collaborative charity event supporting Heritage Ottawa and Paws for a Cause animal rescue.
The general concept behind the event is a dual focus walking tour and adoption event, where participants would get to meet dogs that are eligible for adoption, get to know them a little, and choose a dog to take on a walk for the duration of a historical walking tour. This event would run every Sunday over the course of a month, providing special tours with a combination of well known and at-risk historical sites around Ottawa. Each Sunday the tour offered would be different, focusing on a different neighbourhood. I designed a combination of print media, social media, and apparel to support and advertise the event.
Heritage Ottawa is a non-profit that already provides historical walking tours, so the jump to a special series of walking tours was quite natural. Walking a dog and playing with it is also one of the best ways to get to know them, so connecting the two in a joint event was a very fun way to include two things I'm very passionate about into this project: history, and animals.
From the sketching point it was decided I would add a print poster into the design roster, to help focus more on pre-event advertising. The tshirt designs would be a free item given to participants who registered for the tours, and so wouldn't be as useful for advertising prior to the events starting. The purpose of the tshirts, while also being commemorative "swag," would also function as advertising through the tours. As the event runs over the course of a month, people wearing these matching shirts on the tours would be seen, and ideally would prompt people to look into what the event is, and perhaps register themselves.
