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Historic Hinton, WV

Tracking A Rich Rail History

In Summers County, WV, along the banks of the New River, lies a charming little city built around a once booming rail and coal industry. Established in 1873 and chartered in 1897, Hinton, WV, is full of beautifully crafted architecture and a promising future. Considering its rich past, in 1984, the National Register of Historic Places listed most of Hinton.

To leverage their history, the City of Hinton tasked us with developing a “walking tour” brochure, meant to outline key historical places within Hinton and encourage tourists to walk around the city, exposing them to history and a variety of local businesses. We dove into this project headfirst and loved every minute of it, from planning and mapping to photo restoration and printing.

Historic Hinton Logo Design

Problems We Solved

The vintage photos our client had needed to be restored and converted to a higher resolution. They also required a custom map created that we could scale and fit into the brochure. 

Our Favorite Aspects

Working with our neighbors in Hinton was terrific. The city has so many beautiful features, from its structures to its natural allure. Exploring the world of mapping was also extremely fun.

A Guided Tour

Early in the print design process, we began restoring various black and white photos taken of the buildings shortly after being built. With the images fixed, we not only had high-resolution versions better suited for printing, but we also had better proportions to work with so we could create a full-panel layout for the cover of the brochure.

After city officials approved the design, we coordinated printing for 1,000 11″ x 17″ trifold brochures printed and delivered. Twice the size of a standard brochure, these extra-large brochures gave us more room to work with landmark information without having to sacrifice the size of the text. 

An image from a postcard taken in 1907 feature Hotel Mcreery

Vintage Logo Creation

During planning, we realized we needed a brand for Historic Hinton. We needed a logo that could go on the cover page of the brochure. We explored a brand identity with a historical vibe and put together a simple, vintage-style logo for the map. We also made a vector version of a considerable landmark within the city – The Bluestone Dam.

The Bluestone Dam Photo verses Vector recreation
A digital map of Hinton, WV that features historical points of interest. Created by Starry Eyes Media in Princeton, WV

You’ll Know Where To Look.

The process of creating a map for the Historic Hinton project involved pulling a custom Google Map city officials created to list their points of interest. With the street names and building locations, we created a custom vector map that numbered and pinpointed all of the designated landmarks. This map allows tourists to easily find points of historical interest, with large numbered map markers that correspond to a brochure panel dedicated to giving information about each location.Â