Better Walk

Better Walk

Designing long-distance walks. A study on Via Francigena.

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I admit: I have not yet walked Via Francigena. In 2019, a colleague linked me to the design competition “Francigena in Commune”, initiated by three villages / towns in Lombardy. The task was to create public furniture for pilgrims – with a signage / identity dimension. After a quick research including a 30km test walk along Caminho Portuguese (because I happened to be there) my personal conclusion was that pilgrims do not have an urgent furniture issue – but as a designer I do have some questions about Via Francigena’s symbol. Questions I decided to explore a bit further in the following months. Let’s compare Via Francigena with its European siblings…

Camino de Santiago

Olavsweg

Via Martini

Comparing the visual identities of European pilgrimage routes shows a wide range of quality. Some symbols are outstandingly strong and efficient – first to mention the scallop shell of St James – others are quite complex. Such is, sorry to be blunt, the Fidenza pilgrim, the current symbol of Via Francigena.

Given the increasing importance of those routes for slow tourism and cultural awareness of Europe, this inconsistency in quality was a surprise to me.

Via Regia

Via Francigena

Standing alone, these symbols might tell their stories. Unfortunately, in real life, orientation symbols do hardly stand alone. Nor do they have time to tell stories. To give an example‌

Pilgrimage routes are often combined with bicycle trails.

Strong symbols can deal with such an additional information. Others get into trouble‌

Via Francigena’s symbol can be misunderstood as a mode of mobility, walking. This is what happened here in Italy.

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Welcome to the jungle. To a pilgrim, it does not matter if a sign is official or less. It is more important if it is there – or not. For pilgrims, the sign above might be a sufficient solution.

On the other hand, symbols in public do not only speak to pilgrims but to everybody. Every unclear symbol is a missed chance to invite new people to the route.

photos (CC) : Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

Via Francigena leads through a beautiful jungle of good will and voluntary action. This is great for the pilgrims and at the same time a challenge for visual communication. The solution should not be to replace every good will with boring professionalism but to face the jungle with a jungle-proof symbol.

Setting Network Standards. In Europe, a pilgrimage route is never alone. Via Francigena partly touches a western branch of St James’s Way. There are European and national long-distance paths crossing as well.

Walking is not a local business anymore. A slow mobility network throughout the continent does already exist – and more and more people discover it.

Taking slow tourism seriously means to set up quality standards for this slow network. Via Francigena could take an exemplary step into this direction.

shut up!

Symbols often compete under inconvenient conditions – being densely clustered, being far away, in the rain, in the dark. By the way, what is this yellowish thing on the left?

So… what about me?

Bad guy? The Fidenza pilgrim is specific about his time – the Middle Ages – and about his mode of mobility – walking. He is not specific about his destination. His historic reference – a stone relief at Fidenza cathedral – is neither obvious nor self-explanatory but it makes him visually complex and fragile.

A symbol for Via Francigena should be specific about the destination. To be adaptable in signage systems, it should avoid any interference with other categories (esp. modes of mobility). The content and the technical shape should be simple without any background knowledge necessary. Last but not least, a symbol should be rather timeless than referring to the past.

The Fidenza pilgrim looks like a suitable local signage solution which has been poorly scaled up to an international identity concept, ignoring the higher level of complexity that follows such a step.

Good guy. Being a well-established symbol, the Fidenza pilgrim stands for a good amount of voluntary and professional effort that went into Via Francigena so far.

Neither should this fact be ignored nor will the Fidenza pilgrim vanish from one day to another. Actually, he is more of a mascot than a symbol and that can be his future role. By the way: Like every good mascot, he urgently needs a name!

Watch the others.

The shell of St James took centuries to resolve all the previously mentioned issues. It is now as clear as a symbol can be.

Without graphical interpretation needed, any shell works as a symbol.

Foto: Cheryl Strahl (with friendly permission of the artist)

so what if…

photo: PH

photo (edited) : Rufus46 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

St Peter’s Key is a clear reference to Via Francigena’s destination, St Peter’s cathedral in Rome. One key is enough.

The Vatican’s coat-of-arms (and some Francigena pilgrims’ associations following it) shows two crossed keys. Yet my advice would be to follow the gentleman on the left (standing in the Cathedral of Regensburg) and show a single key to keep the story clear and easy to handle.

A key is an everyday object. Pilgrims would not need to buy a badge. A simple key, fixed on their backpacks (as shown on the previous spread) could show where they are going.

Camino de Santiago had centuries to develop a clear symbol. Via Francigena could speed up a bit.

Walking politics. Imagine Via Francigena was a highway.

There would be international design standards for the entire infrastructure. We would not talk about a symbol only but also about the hardware of the signs, about the number of toilets along the road and even about the curve shapes of the road itself. National authorities with legislative power and virtually unlimited fundings would implement whatever we decide.

Walking is different. On the one hand, orientation in a grown environment is more complex than in an artificial network (as highways are). Interventions should not be designed too schematically but they must precisely fit local conditions. On the other hand, walking is politically marginalized, compared to motorized traffic. Via Francigena is overseen by a huge number of local administrations, associations, churches and other players involved. All of them with slightly different contributions and different agendas. None of them has the operational power to decide outside their limited territory. The Fidenza pilgrim is currently the only design element that remains more or less coherent all the way from Canterbury to Rome.

That‘s why symbols would be the first option for design interventions that regard the route as a whole.

In the long run, it would make sense to think about a political constellation with more operational impact than the current plurality of minor players, maybe involving international partners such as the EU or churches. That would be ne­cessary to set standards beyond graphical elements or to make visible the idea of a European slow network. To keep the political discussion short: Anything that works is welcome (and Brexit sucks).

Walking is the key to the ecologic turn in mobility. It is a sensual pleasure, it is social, healthy and inclusive. Slow tourism is a vehicle for sustainable development of the regions. It requires better efforts for people walking. It is more than legitimate for citizens to ask for a better design standard on long-distance routes such as Via Francigena.

Philipp Heinlein grew up in the Franconian forest and studied at Bauhaus-University Weimar and Politechnico di Milano. Expert for 100-m-long tin can phones (2016), crossed-out human beings (2018), also familiar with interaction design for cars (until 2020). Currently, he designs books and an orientation system for pedestrians (2021, on the right). Philipp is new in Berlin (since 2020).

Reviews: “made drawings under the table” (school teacher) “works slowly” (advertisement agency) “hired by mistake” (fellow lecturer) “this concept sounds like selling cubes as balls” (Munich Transport Authority – all quotations in their general sense).

Foto: H. Schmieder

© 2021 Philipp Heinlein