Horisont
Meditative Hiking in Tøndermarsken
CONCEPT, IDENTITY
& UI DESIGN
2019
Horisont is a meditative hiking concept inspired by the tranquil nature of the Danish Tøndermarsken area. Horisont lets the user experience the UNESCO world heritage-protected scenery of the Tønder marshlands, while helping the user find peace of mind through meditation exercises placed around routes in the area.
The project consists of an app, a wayfinding system and a brand identity, developed as a Semester project at KADK. The assigned challenge was: design a concept to bring more tourists to the southern Danish city of Tønder.
When visiting Tønder I went for a walk in the marshlands, where I was struck by the zen-like tranquility and beauty of the flat landscape. Being used to living in the city however, I found it difficult to totally emerge myself in the calmness as my mind was still stressfully racing, stopping me from truly being present in the surroundings. I decided to make the focus of my project to help people experience peace of mind in the marshlands, and promote the unique atmosphere of the area.
The Horisont app presents the user with different routes of varying lengths in Tøndermarsken, each with a set of practice stations set up around the trail. The practice stations are set up in carefully chosen places, and lets you access a calming exercise with the focus of grounding the user in the presence, taking notice of the surroundings, or sensing how they feel. The app is activated by an NFC chip in the station, and accesses a specific short exercise, whose instructions will be shown in the app.
The test routes used in the project were developed by walking the marshland myself, and throughout the process I interviewed locals from the area about their relationship with Tøndermarsken to hone in on a poignant and authentic focus. Finally the visual identity is based on trying to evoke simplicity and calmness without it being cold, by combining the minimal UI with animations of hand drawn scenes from the marshlands.
View the product and highlights from the process in the gallery below
marcus melo, 2020