Design · Branding
Valley of Geysers
Долина гейзеров
Identity and wayfinding for an eco-tourism centre in Kamchatka's Valley of Geysers
The Valley of Geysers is one of the largest geyser fields in the world, hidden inside a strict nature reserve in Kamchatka. I designed an identity for an eco-tourism centre there that should feel warm and curious rather than rustic: a colour system taken from thermal maps, recoloured photographs of the valley, and a wordmark that rises like steam.
Brief
The Valley of Geysers lies in the Kronotsky biosphere reserve. On six square kilometres there are geysers, hot springs, mud pots and waterfalls, with their own climate and wildlife. Visitors have been allowed in by helicopter only, under the reserve's strict rules, since 1992, and in 2008 the valley was named one of the Seven Wonders of Russia.
The client is an eco-tourism centre: it plans tours into wild places, builds and maintains the trails, trains guides, and houses visitors. Its guests are eco-tourists who come for silence and want to leave no trace, photographers chasing light and steam, and researchers who see the valley as a living laboratory.
The metaphor is the thermal image.
Idea
The vision: prove that eco-tourism can be modern. A centre that carries the feeling of travel and the character of the valley without falling into the usual wooden huts and old-fashioned charm. Its character: warm, exploratory, curious.
The metaphor is the thermal image. A geyser is heat you can see, so the palette runs like a heat map from hot red and coral to pale yellow and cool mint. I put the valley's photographs through the same gradient, and the land itself starts to glow.
Process
This project grew out of the previous module, where I studied the colours of Kamchatka's landscapes. I started from research: the geysers Velikan, Zhemchuzhny and Sakharny, the history of the valley, old stamps. Then I mapped where the valley sits among the world's geyser sites, from Yellowstone to Hakone, and wrote the brand platform.
The wordmark stacks the letters of «Долина гейзеров» into a narrow shape, like a column of steam or a trail climbing a slope. Lines of type bend along paths and horizons on the posters. The idea was simple: the logo itself should look like a geyser.
Result
A system that works from a trail sign to a phone screen: posters, wayfinding, the Ecotrail boards, a guidebook folder with the rules of the trails, a door hanger for the guest houses, keychains with the valley's coordinates, and an app with audio walks.
Credits
- Photographs of the Valley of Geysers: archive and stock photography, recoloured
- Mockups: stock templates
- Thermal-image references in the metaphor slide: third-party images
- Typefaces: Museo Cyrl, Steppe
- Open-air cinema crowd and app photos: AI-generated
HSE Art and Design School, BA Communication Design