AUDIO GUIDE
Pyeniny
The mobile app audio tour to Pieniny mountains lets you listen to the stories and legends exactly where they took place. Don’t worry if you can’t come to Pieniny—you can also use the app wherever you are.
WHAT WE DID
art direction, UX & graphic design, creative writing
STATUS
Ready. Download for iOS or Android. Visit the project website.
AWARDS
A’Design Award, Graduation Projects
PYENINY – AUDIO GUIDE
1 · Story
Hiking Pieniny with local ethnologists was the best trip in our lives. We wanted to make this experience easily available for other mountain enthusiasts.
Pieniny has a rich culture, history and legends. After weeks of hunting for the stories in books, guides and local institutions we selected over 50 historical facts, 30 highlanders’ legends, beliefs and Slavic myths. We gathered them into 26 chapters distributed along the trails.
We’ve come up with a storyteller who witnessed all the described events—a mysterious mountain spirit. He guides the listeners through the history since time immemorial to modern days.
PYENINY – AUDIO GUIDE
PYENINY – AUDIO GUIDE
2 · Map
The core of the app and is the map which guides the travellers. It is also an essential visual element, and so, we knew it has to be spectacular. We decided to make it manually. Mateusz hand-drawn the map line by line and dot by dot. It took him over 180 hours to draw it all and was a truly meditative experience. The map covers the area of about 34 km2.
PYENINY – AUDIO GUIDE
3 · Design
The shape of the logo resembles both pin icon and Three Crowns—the iconic Pieniny peak.
When used in the mountains the app shouldn’t distract the user from enjoying nature; and so, the design is simple yet charming. The app is intuitive; it offers the chapters distributed along the routes—about 30 km. By tapping the chapter pin, a player appears at the bottom of the screen. The user can listen to the recording or read the text.
Simple instructions are provided with the first use, and so is the “Prologue” which introduces the narrator. Both instructions and the opening chapter can be found in the about section.
To encourage the hikers to explore all the routes the visited points are is marked with peak icon – the chapter is “reached”.
A part of the design was an uppercase display typeface inspired by the alleged Slavic runes. For body text, we used Roboto Slab.
PYENINY – AUDIO GUIDE
4 · Audio
We ask two voice actors—Krzysztof Radkowski (Polish) and Roman Picheta (British) to lend their voices for the narrating mountain spirit.
A prominent Slovak musician Peter Adamov composed the soundtrack for each chapter. You can hear local folk musical instruments – the fujara and pipe as well as the violin played by James Evans.
Total time of recordings is about 60 minutes.
