Tony Naqvi
Experience Design

Education through outdoor woodland adventures

Havenswood

Brand, Product & Experience Design

Closer to nature

Kids love the great outdoors. However, inner city kids don't get to experience it very often.

Dedicated educators Martin and Tanya sought to change that by building a learning-centric outdoor woodland adventure park with a curriculum -based program targeted at schools and learning centres.

Their goal was to integrate outdoor learning into the educational process that would allow students more freqent exposure to nature and woodlands than would otherwise happen.

Everything is designed to be fun, immersive, and highly interactive to encourage and boost both motor and mental functions.

They also wished the experience to be very tactile, and physically engaging, and so established a program that is both very hands-on and physically demanding - students are faced with various challenges that include exploring, finding, documenting, building, and of course, playing.

In fact, play is integral to the learning process at Havenswood; all the experiences are design to be fun, immersive, and highly interactive to encourage and boost both motor and mental functions.

One of the stand-out features of Havenswood is it's versatility - things are never quite the same, each visit is unique, and there are always new experiences and activities to delight and capture imaginative young minds.

And this is where I enter this adventure in the wild.

My son has been a avid fan and attendee at Havenswood for many years, and we've a great relationship with Martin and Tanya. So when they reached out and asked if I could help with updating the branding and product design, I was only too happy to lend a hand.

I was given a completely clean slate - no restrictions, just something fun, but modern.

I really wanted to capture the essence of the woodlands, and combine it with the fun and adventurous spirit of the park. I started with looking at all the different activities, some of which are transitory and others that are more permanent fixtures. I took the approach of a collage that playfully combines them in a linear outline style that could be easily re-arranged in various ways to create lots of unique illustrations.

I really wanted to capture the essence of the woodlands, and combine it with the fun and adventurous spirit of the park

For the logo, I took the initials H W and combined them in a simple and elegant monogram that is reminiscent of trees - adding to the nature-inspired theme of the brand design.

I then created a design system that encompassed a product-focussed visual language, leveraging the illustrations to great effect to create a pattern library that can be used across a wide range of different merchandise.

Small size, big ambitions

It's thoroughly rewarding working with small, local businesses and enterprises, helping them get off the ground and grow to become integral parts of the community. And in the case of Havenswood, bigger ambitions to really become part of the educational and social fabric of the nationwide academic landscape that encourages, nurtures, and provides an inspiring escape for young and adventurous minds that might otherwise be confined to the urban jungle.

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Tony Naqvi
Experience Design

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