Series 4 Waypoint
TRAILS
An Exploration of Our Country's Long-Distance Trails.
Congratulations! You've been selected to participate in Type Hike's fourth series: Trails. Welcome to the Waypoint.
Nature connects people who will never meet. Even a solo adventure down a narrow path links the hiker to each and every explorer who has made the same journey. While not always without danger and difficulty, trails guide wanderers back into the wild. Trekking these great distances, staring down into deep canyons and across mountain ranges often gives us a clearer view of ourselves. We live in a big world, a wild place, but we are not alone in our adventure.
2018 is the 50th anniversary of the National Trails System Act of 1968 which began the important work of preserving our country's great pathways.
The following are a selection of our country's long distance trails:
American Discovery Trail
Appalachian NST
Arizona NST
Backbone Trail
Bay Area Ridge Trail
Buckeye Trail
Colorado Trail
Continental Divide NST
Florida NST
The Hayduke Trail
John Muir Trail
Iditarod Trail
Ice Age NST
Long Trail
Mountains-to-Sea Trail
Natchez Trace NST
New England NST
North Country NST
Oregon Coast Trail
Pacific Crest NST
Pacific Northwest NST
Potomac Heritage NST
Sierra High Route
Project details
The purpose of this project is to use our collective talent to celebrate nature through typography. Each designer will create a type-based design that expresses their unique viewpoint and love for the outdoors.
ELEMENTS / Each design must include the trail's full name, including "National Scenic Trail" or "NST" for those trails.
COLOR / Each design can include up to three colors chosen from the palette below. Limiting the color choices will create visual continuity across all designs and simplify print production.
SIZE / Designs will be built at 24" x 36" at 300 ppi (or 7200px x 10800 px in robot numbers) in either portrait or landscape orientation.
USE / The full set of designs will be exhibited on typehike.com and shared on Instagram. Postcards and posters will be printed for each design and sold in the online shop and by select retailers. Apparel for a selection of the designs will also be printed through a partnership with Cotton Bureau. Exhibitions are being planned for various galleries, museums, and universities across the country.
CONSIDERATIONS / While we want to keep the design guidelines as open as possible to allow creativity to thrive, we learned some lessons from the first series that are worth sharing:
- If all goes well, the full set of 23 designs will be screen printed as posters and on apparel - keep the limitations of screen printing in mind while designing. Blend modes, such as multiply, will create color interactions that are not reproducible with screen printing.
- Designs that are "self-contained" and do not rely heavily on the edges of the canvas are easier to print on shirts.
- Thin frames around the edge of the design are difficult to reproduce accurately across the three printed sizes. If seeing a print of your design with slightly uneven border thicknesses is going to churn your stomach, avoid dancing on the edge.
- Please do not use any NPS owned logos, images, or shapes in your designs - we are not licensed to reproduce any trademarked material.
We respect that you are not be participating in this project for financial gain, so credits will always be shown with the designs. We encourage you to seize this opportunity to showcase you talent. Type Hike's exposure is constantly growing and your work will be seen and enjoyed by many.
Timeline
1/1/18 - Designer/Location Selection Announced
The group of designers participating in this series will be announced along with their selected trail or river.
2/23/18 - Final Designs Completed
All designs must be completed by February 23rd in order to prepare prints for the launch. When your design is complete, please email a jpeg or pdf and the original file to letsgo@typehike.com.
4/13/18 - Series Launch
The designs will be published and will be available for sale until 12/11/18.