Step into the story.
Sanpo is Japanese for an unhurried stroll: walking for the pleasure of it rather than to get somewhere. The name carries the zen feel of the brand and puts the walk at its centre.
The walk is not the interval between two places. It is the thing itself.
SPELLING: Always “Sanpo”, capital S, rest lowercase. Never “SANPO” or “San Po” in running text.
SLOGAN: “Step into the story”, sentence case, with a full stop when it stands alone.
COMBINED: Name first, slogan second: “Sanpo. Step into the story.”
PRODUCT: The walks themselves are called podwalks. Sanpo is the brand and the app.
No logo exists yet. Until the wordmark is drawn, the lock-up is set in type: name, full stop, slogan. Never a symbol, never an icon.
We create walks in which the story comes first. The route exists to tell the story, and you experience the story by walking the route.
Story is not a theme applied to a route. It is the reason the route exists.
Stories don’t belong only in books, museums or on signs. We want people to experience them where they happened, at their own pace, with their phone as their guide.
Every walk tells a real story you won’t hear told this way anywhere else.
GROUND: Stories are grounded in real places, people and events.
TOLD: No generic tourist information, but a told story with character.
IRREPLACEABLE: Every route is unique to the place where you walk.
We start from the why. The product (the podwalks) follows from that drive; it is not the starting point.
WHY: Offering unique and authentic experiences to a digital native generation.
HOW (derived): Stories written for one place, walked at your own pace, with the technology staying out of the way.
WHAT (derived): GPS-based podwalks: audio that starts where the story happens. Free, open and available.
The “digital native generation” from our why breaks down into four segments. Working hypotheses from the whiteboard session, not validated research.
Shared: highly educated, 20–50, quality over mainstream. GEO stands for generative engine optimisation: being found through AI search and assistants, alongside classic SEO.
TAKE 01 · SLOW TRAVELLER: Travels to take a place in rather than to tick it off. Avoids the standard tourist circuit and wants content about a destination that they couldn’t have found in a guidebook.
TAKE 02 · PODCAST FANATIC: Already listens to audio stories every day and judges them on production quality. For this segment the bar is the story and the sound.
TAKE 03 · EXPAT: Has moved to a new city and wants to understand where they now live, beyond the practical. Learns by doing and experiencing.
TAKE 04 · CURIOSITY SEEKER: The youngest segment, with a background in the humanities. Hungry for new and original stories, open to fiction as well as non-fiction.
From audio tours, tourist apps and traditional city walks. Not three features: three positions a competitor would have to give up something to copy.
Anyone can walk any route, with no paywall or account. Those who want to can support us with a voluntary contribution (“Buy me a coffee”).
A good digital experience is not an afterthought: the app runs smoothly, feels intuitive and stays out of the way while you walk.
The stories are crafted with care, told in an original way and true to the facts.
The competition sells access. We give the walk away and ask for a coffee afterwards.
At the heart of the brand is an app with podwalks: walking routes with audio stories that start automatically based on your GPS location.
01 · CHOOSE: One route, one story. No account, no paywall.
02 · DOWNLOAD: Tours and audio are fetched before you leave. Outside coverage is the normal case, not the exception.
03 · WALK: You don’t need to look at your screen; the story guides you.
04 · ARRIVE: Story and surroundings come together: you hear about a place while standing in it.
Every stop can also be played by hand, for the times the fix is late or the phone is asleep.
From story to interface. Each one has a failure mode named next to it.
CREATIVE: We tell stories in a surprising, distinctive way.
DO: Original angles, atmospheric storytelling
DON'T: A dry list of dates
AUTHENTIC: What we tell is real and accurate.
DO: Real sources, local voices, an honest tone
DON'T: Invented sensation, marketing speak
ZEN: The experience offers calm and space.
DO: Your own pace, little screen time, calm design
DON'T: Push notifications, busy screens, hurry
When two values collide, zen wins. A creative idea that costs the walker their calm is not a Sanpo idea.
The first visual direction, to be developed. Five readings of it follow in this deck.
This direction reads the brand as a recording: a walk heard, then written down. Newsprint ground, ink speech, red pencil for the editor’s marks, and a waveform that moves like a playhead.
Calm and narrative. Personal: we address the listener directly as “you”. Honest and free of exaggeration; the story can speak for itself.
SAYS: Discover Barcelona’s best-kept secrets!
SAY: You’re standing where the market opened at five in the morning.
The second sentence gives you the place. The first one sells it.
SAYS: Audio tour available now — book today!
SAY: Press play when you’re ready. The street will wait.
No urgency. The walk sets the pace, not the app.
SAYS: 300+ attractions, 5 languages, 4.8 stars
SAY: Five stops, one kilometre, no hurry.
Numbers that describe the walk, not numbers that impress.
The home screen does one job: get you to the start of a walk that will work without a signal.
STATUS: Offline ready — the walk works without a signal.
PRIMARY: Start walk — one route, one story, no account.
NAV: Tours · Near me · Account. Three tabs, no more.
Radius 2 px. Cards are cut, not inflated. A hairline does the work a shadow would do elsewhere.
The route plate uses the deck’s own street drawing, so the app and the brand book are visibly the same system.
The player is a sheet of paper with a photograph at the top. No waveform, no equaliser, no time machine.
One accent: ink on the progress bar and the play button. Everything else is ink on newsprint.
“Play next stop manually” is a first-class button, not a hidden fallback. It is the iOS survival path.
Same bones: newsprint ground, hairline rules, mono captions, one photograph doing the persuading.
The waveform sits under the screen, like a player dock. Same hand-authored pattern as every slide.
Palette
Red pencil: editor’s marks only, ≤4% of a slide.
Type
Waveform spec: fixed hand-authored bars. Played part in ink, rest at 18% ink.
Rules
A brand book is a map, not the walk. Nine questions from the brand book.
Q01: Design the Sanpo logo and wordmark, including a lock-up with the slogan.
Q02: Validate the four target audience segments with short interviews or a survey.
Q03: Estimate the size of each segment and decide which one to target first.
Q04: Work out the four segments into full personas: motivations, walking context, digital behaviour, willingness to contribute.
Q05: Decide whether Sanpo also offers fiction, given the curiosity seeker’s interest and how that fits the “authentic” value.
Q06: Work out the revenue model: is a voluntary contribution enough, or are partners or grants needed?
Q07: Define the colour palette, typography and imagery in a design system.
Q08: Guidelines for story creators: length, style and source attribution per story.
Q09: Develop “how and where to reach” further: physical places such as hostels, cafés, museums and route starts are still open.
Sources
Every mockup in this deck is a layout study. No logo has been designed yet; the wordmark is set in type throughout.
The walk as a recording. Newsprint, ink speech, red pencil marks, a waveform that behaves like a playhead.