Visit Gippsland: The Lakes, the Alps and the Prom, town by town

Design approach

The site is built around the Gippsland Wonder identity, and lets that identity lead. The wordmark stacks GIPPS, wonder and LAND, and the pages echo it, pairing a handwritten script line (“All kinds of Gippsland”, “Explore unforgettable”, “There’s a lot to”) with a heavy uppercase display word beneath (WONDER, DESTINATIONS, DO & SEE). Every hub page opens on a full-bleed photograph (kayakers on a still river, a cellar-door window over farmland, the lit chambers of the Buchan Caves), with the headline set directly on the image, and on Home a search field sits in the hero itself.

Below the heroes the palette narrows: white sections, a deep blue accent for buttons, the Discover tabs and the events toolbar, and a darker teal band for the newsletter sign-up and the footer. Three typefaces take three jobs: NationalBlack for the uppercase display words, GoldenPlains for the script lines above them and DIN for everything else, so a Destinations hub and a Buchan Caves page read as the same site before a Visitor reaches the copy.

Platform features

The signature element is the Discover block on the home page. A stylised map of Gippsland colours its five regions (West, South, Central, East and Phillip Island) and pins landmarks: Mount Baw Baw, Tarra-Bulga, the Gippsland Lakes, Ninety Mile Beach, Croajingolong and Wilsons Promontory, with Melbourne and Victoria’s High Country shown for bearings. Four tabs switch the same map between Regions, Drive Times, National Parks and Drive Itineraries, so one block answers where, how long, what and which way.

Drives get their own index. The Great Alpine Road (313 km, 5 hours, Gippsland Lakes to Wangaratta), the Penguins to Prom Drive (210 km, 3 hours, between Phillip Island and Wilsons Promontory) and the West Gippsland Hinterland Drive (409 km, 6 hours, via Walhalla, Mt Baw Baw, Yarragon and Warragul) each carry a distance and a duration on the Drives index, as do shorter routes such as the Forest & Sea Drive and the Marlo to Mallacoota Drive. The East and South Gippsland drink trails are a different kind of content: narrative trails filed under Eat & Drink rather than Drives.

Events run on a live calendar with a keyword search, a date-range picker and a location search, and the home page surfaces what is coming up with the dates stamped on the imagery. Operator Products such as accommodation, tours and attractions come through Roam’s ATDW synchronisation, so the team curates rather than retypes. An Instagram feed brings @visitgippsland onto the home page, a newsletter sign-up (“Gippsland travel inspiration”) sits above the footer, and an industry section, linked from the footer, gives Operators and partners their own front door.

Content and information architecture

Destinations are organised by region and then by town: more than 80 town and locality pages, from Walhalla and Yarragon in the west to Mallacoota and Dinner Plain in the east. Do & See is organised by intent (Nature & Outdoors, Eat & Drink, Arts, Culture & Heritage), then into specific, searchable guides: best coastal walks, rail trails, beaches with lighthouses, farmers’ markets, dog-friendly Gippsland. Parks & Reserves features eleven national and coastal parks and eleven top-pick state parks and reserves, then lists more than 70 parks, reserves and outdoor sites A-Z. An Aboriginal Gippsland page brings together cultural experiences across the region.