Participatory place branding through design: The case of Dunga beach in Kisumu, Kenya

For place branding to reach long-term commitment and legitimacy a large number of stakeholders needs to be involved. This calls for innovative ways of approaching the process itself, permitting it to be participatory and changeable. In this article, the purpose is to describe, in detail, how a place branding process can take place in practice, and illustrate how an integration of design can act as a mean to reach community participation. The example is a tourism development case in Kisumu, Kenya where the authors were actively involved in destination branding. The findings show how the empathic and intuitive process of design allows each activity to lead to the other in an evolutionary way, and how visual tools can strengthen communication between participants as well as stimulate idea generation. The implication is that place branding should be viewed as consisting of several ongoing processes with multiple stakeholders. With the introduction of evolutionary and visual elements to these processes, they become more participatory, changeable and sustainable.