Our County Collection

If you follow my Instagram posts and stories you'll notice that I often post about the place where we live -  Prince Edward County. It's a charming "island" in Lake Ontario that juts out from the north shore between Toronto and Montreal. Since 2019, Mario and I have enjoyed working with the municipal staff at the County and together we've produced a Visitor's Guide, maps, banners, itineraries and many projects featuring the idyllic scenes of this special place.

Even though we've lived in PEC for quite a while, these projects had us researching, reading up on County history and driving around finding out-of-the-way and hidden gems that were brand new to us. The land itself is 48 km across and boasts over 500 km of shoreline! It's a lot to explore and even now we're still finding new-to-us places!

Here is one of the maps that we created ©2019.

In addition to the map, images and icons were developed into scenes and formatted into 28 pages for the County's first ever Illustrated guide book that was designed to help tourists and Islanders find off-the-beaten-track sites. Click HERE for a link to the complete guide.

The 2019 Visitor's Guide went on to win the National EDAC award and based on the success of the guide we were commissioned to extend the guide into 2020 including new content and experiences. Just before printing, at the last minute we were asked to add masks (thanks Covid) on a few of the characters and we also changed text to encourage visitors to travel safely. Even though things slowed down for many that year, our little island surged with visitors as Ontarians were encouraged to stay close to home. Our famous beaches and campgrounds were packed that first summer of 2020. The Visitor's Guide proved to be a great resource for those looking for alternatives when the beaches were overcrowded.

Pictured below are some of the double page spreads from the 2020 edition of the PEC Visitor Guide. You can see that we featured events and scenes from each season and encouraged visitors to search out the green spaces along with craft breweries, wineries, cafes, markets and farm-to-table restaurants.

Below are both versions of the Visitor's Guide (2019 L and 2020 R). 

At the beginning of 2022, we were still dealing with the effects of Covid-19 and small businesses were still taking a hit. The Economic Development Team at the County and their counterparts at The Bay of Quinte wanted to promote small businesses and developed 3 itineraries for their web platforms. They asked 3 local writer/bloggers to create the scripting and I designed the maps to follow their lead. This was a fun project and again we got to research and explore some new-to-us areas; this time north in the Bay of Quinte! 

Here are the 3 maps with itineraries. An Outdoorsy Weekend, A Foodie Weekend and A Wellness Weekend - all in Prince Edward County and the Bay of Quinte.

After all these projects over a few years, we've got a good collection of icons and scenes including local businesses, green spaces and local favourites. Some have been formatted to note cards that were sold at the local museums and our limited edition tea towel is now available in our online shop. If you'd like to see our imagery on a product, we're open to ideas. Drop us a message at kelly@kellypanacci.com

As always, thanks for reading my rambles,