Designing the Dallas Cultural Trail

Client: Deep Ellum Foundation

Human-Centered Design | Qualitative Research | Prototyping | Storytelling | Client Management

Design Challenge: How might we design a cultural trail for Dallas?

The Scenario

The Deep Ellum Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to advance the interests of the Deep Ellum neighborhood, was our client and the lead driver of the exploration of the future development of a Dallas Cultural Trail. The Dallas Cultural Trail was a planned walking trail running through Deep Ellum, the Dallas Arts District, and Fair Park, three designated cultural districts near downtown Dallas.

At the time of this project, the trail was still speculative. There was no defined route or points of interest. It aspired to include landmarks representing every aspect of Dallas culture, from museums and art galleries to historic buildings and concert venues. Ideally, the Dallas Cultural Trail would become a top tourist destination in Dallas, visited by locals who wanted to learn more about their city’s history and culture or by visitors getting their first glimpse of Dallas.

The big challenge through this project was how to connect the three cultural districts: Deep Ellum, Dallas Arts District, and Fair Park and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Solution

Informed by our design research efforts, our team designed and prototyped a brand identity for the Dallas Cultural Trail to create a clearer understanding of what the Dallas Cultural Trail might be for Deep Ellum staff and key stakeholders.

My Role

Lead: I led a team of four multi-disciplinary designers through all phases of our human-centered design process including secondary and primary research, ideation, prototype design, and implementation.

Research: I helped execute all phases of our design research methods including coordination, planning, deployment, and synthesis of key learnings and insights.

Connect: I served as the primary liaison for our research participants ensuring they were connected and aware of our team’s work.

The Design Process

Our team leveraged our human-centered design process to support our client, the Deep Ellum Foundation. Our iterative process is illustrated below.

Context & Understanding

  • What is the current vision for the trail? or is there one?

  • How are the other districts collaborating on this trial?

  • What does a "cultural trail" even mean?

To answer some of these questions, we dug deep into secondary research as well as each districts strategic plans to understand how each entity was approaching the idea of a cultural trail.

We engaged key stakeholders from each of the three cultural districts through a comprehensive design research effort that included expert interviews, a card sort exercise, and a color and visual identity audit. As we move through our research, we began to frame what ultimately became our prototype: a new brand identity for the Dallas Cultural Trail.

01 Design Research

  • Because the Dallas Cultural Trail aspired to represent three different cultural districts in Dallas, our team felt it was important to conduct in-depth interviews with experts from these cultural districts. These interviews provided an authentic, historical, and aspirational foundation for our design team to ideate upon. We conducted eight in-depth interviews over the course of the project.

  • After our design team had established some preliminary brand cornerstones through our secondary research and expert interviews, we used a card sort to test whether people felt these brand cornerstones might align with a prospective audience’s idea of a Dallas Cultural Trail. We considered our target audience to be a “local tourist.”

    On a Sunday afternoon, we spent two hours engaging with nearly 30 participants to understand what brand cornerstones this group valued most. This exercise affirmed the direction our design team was heading and we solidified three primary brand cornerstones: historic, authentic, and vibrant.

  • The visual and color audit consisted of an in-depth visual observation exercise in which our design team spent more than six hours over two days walking through each of the three cultural districts (Deep Ellum, Dallas Arts District, and Fair Park). We documented colors, graphics, typography, and overall look and feel to help us identify the recurring visual themes, commonly used colors, and imagery.

    We also analyzed the logos and visual identity of similar civic and cultural organizations or initiatives from across the country such as the Indianapolis Cultural Trail and Atlanta BeltLine.

“The Dallas Cultural Trail cannot be a thing that gets done once. The Dallas Cultural Trail has to be a story that is evolving because the culture of Dallas is evolving.”

- J. Damany Daniel, Event Nerd

“Dallas demands repeat viewings. It demands repeat visitations. It demands deep and engrossing engagement with what we have here, because what we have here is so amazing.”

- Will Evans, Deep Vellum

Through our expert interviews, we distilled what we heard into four primary insights to guide our future work:

  • Define Culture: Culture is a way to bring people together in conversation around something greater and is inclusive of history, architecture, art, music, literature, industry, and entertainment.

  • Identify a Shared History: The three cultural districts are connected through their history as freedmen’s towns and the Dallas Cultural Trail should center on this connection as it brings the stories of history to life.

  • Determine the Right Stories: Dallas can thrive when it embraces an approach that tells an authentic story, including the positive and negative and especially in communities that have been built artistically and structurally by people of color.

  • Evolve with Action: The trail would serve as a means to draw people in, but it should not be static. As the culture of Dallas evolves, the story of the Dallas Cultural Trail should also evolve.

Additionally, the results from our Card Sort, helped our team finalize our brand cornerstones and develop a holistic brand identity, vision, and position for our speculative Dallas Cultural Trail brand. Our three brand cornerstones for our brand identity prototype became:

02 Research Insights

Historic

Authentic

Vibrant

Color & Visual Identity Audit

The Prototype: Dallas Cultural Trail Brand Identity

By designing a brand identity, we could provide our client an internal document which would help provide a strategic foundation for the Dallas Cultural Trail brand, inspire everyone who works on the project with a vision to rally around, and ensure consistency wherever the brand is applied.

The brand identity connected the founding three cultural districts through:

  • A shared language

  • A shared visual aesthetic

  • A consistent identity that organizers and supporters can rally around

Two primary components of our brand identity included a brand vision and a brand position. The brand vision is the ideas behind the brand that help guide the future. The brand position illustrates how the brand is different from its competitors and where, or how, it sits in customers minds.

Uncovering the historic, authentic, and vibrant cultural community of our city.

01 Brand Vision

  • For the Dallas Cultural Trail, uncovering is rooted in action. We aim to design an experience that can be actively explored by those who visit it. The trail will uncover the multiple layers of Dallas’ cultural past, present, and future. As visitors engage with these layers, they will stumble upon the cultural stories of Dallas that have been covered up, both physically and narratively. As we uncover, we can tell a more comprehensive cultural story of Dallas while stoking the natural curiosity of the trail’s visitors. We aim to introduce Dallas’ rich cultural community when it is least expected. People may come to Dallas looking for one thing, but while they are here they will discover another.

  • Our city is often driven by progress and growth, but its rich and diverse history is a story that needs to be told. When we understand the history of where we come from, we better understand where we are today, and where we are going. Historically, our three founding cultural districts are connected through their shared origins as freedmen’s towns that over time became robust cultural and entertainment districts. The vestiges of this past history remain in both the built environment and community centers. The history of our city begins with these cultural neighborhoods. History does not simply exist, but it is actively being written here.

  • When we center on authenticity, we can represent the truest, most real Dallas. A Dallas where everyone feels welcome. A Dallas that is accessible to all individuals. We aim to share the too often unknown or underrepresented stories of Dallas. These authentic stories bring the history to life while also showing us an accurate present. From art and literature to music and dance, we strive to uplift the most authentic version of our city.

  • Our city is a place where you can create anything you desire. We aim to celebrate the vibrant, unique, and diverse arts and culture ecosystem that exists across our city. From world-renowned concert venues to hidden gem theaters, our city provides a space for everyone to create. This energy and enthusiasm matches the entrepreneurial spirit that has embodied our city. And it is our most vibrant self that will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of artists, musicians, and storytellers.

  • We are the artists, musicians, writers, dancers, and storytellers who are creating our city’s culture today. We are at the core of what makes Dallas beautiful and are telling the most authentic cultural story of our city. We create space for everyone to engage in this cultural experience, bringing our community together through this shared experience. We exist not only in museums, art galleries, and community centers, but also in public murals, city parks, and the streets. We are the cultural heartbeat of Dallas.

  • We chose a target that is broad enough to encompass a wide range of people, but holds a shared value of a desire to know more. These are the people who understand culture is not created by what you can find on a map, but by what you experience in the places in between. They actively seek out new, diverse, and unique experiences. They enjoy discovering the hidden gems, and when they do they share their discoveries broadly.

  • Just as culture itself evolves, the Dallas Cultural Trail will need to be flexible in how it positions itself to compete for our target’s time and resources. The Dallas Cultural Trail will become a part of our city’s diverse and unique arts and culture ecosystem, but it should always strive to operate from a place of collaboration, not competition. As it evolves, it likely will operate, structurally, like a non-profit, speaking to potential supporters and funders of both arts and culture and parks and trails.

  • Our most compelling benefit is the singular idea that makes the Dallas Cultural Trail endearing to our audience. As the Dallas Cultural Trail, we will succeed when we are a part of enhancing culture broadly in Dallas. We strive to embrace the most authentic version of Dallas and elevate Dallas as the culturally diverse and unique place it is. Our ultimate goal is to empower the next generation of arts and culture changemakers, leaving a lasting legacy on the future of our city.

To people who want to discover the real culture of Dallas, the Dallas Cultural Trail is the immersive experience empowering the creative, artistic and innovative heart of the city.

02 Brand Position

Informed by our Color and Visual Audit, one major visual theme surfaced to the top: a mosaic. A mosaic visually represented the vision of the Dallas Cultural Trail – taking parts of a story and create a whole, more complete story. We embraced the vibrant colors we had documented by directly selecting colors from the photos we took ourselves. We also embraced the pattern of three, using three shapes and three colors to represent the three cultural districts.

We solicited feedback on our visual design through a survey. A Dallas Cultural Trail logo should:

  • Reflect Dallas’ historical segregation of neighborhoods

  • Be representative of a trail

03 Logo Design

The Impact

Our design team set out to deliver a speculative Dallas Cultural Trail brand for our client. A designed brand would help our client communicate the distinct and unique vision of the trail and provide a clear voice and visual identity for the Dallas Cultural Trail that lives independently of the three cultural districts it aims to connect.

In addition to our final client presentation, our design team produced a Dallas Cultural Trail Brand Book that our client could leverage when having broad conversations with philanthropists and potential future funders of the Dallas Cultural Trail.