Would you, if you could, re-brand your home town to attract tourists and prospective homeowners alike?

Shrewsbury, two hours outside of London, is going to try.

The town isn’t known as a hopping locale. It doesn’t have any, one over-riding market or concert or festival to draw tourists or prospective residents. So, ss a result, town officials turned to design agency &Smith to help them create a “customizable logo that every local business, from bike mechanics to bread bakers, could use”, as the (Fast Co. Design story notes). And that logo takes cues from the local architecture and feel of the town.

While it’s certainly not new to use typeface to brand (or re-brand) something, what caught my attention about this project was the intersection of offline and online worlds. Here’s a sleepy UK town that wants to gain the attention of the movers and shakers around the country–and to do so, they are taking a logo design to various small businesses in town, and asking them to make it their own. Essentially turning the town into one big advertisement that you can physically walk through.

The town also plans to relaunch it’s website using the new look and feel created by &Smith, but It remains to be seen if a simple typeface change will help boost the town’s appeal and if Shrewsbury will become a future hub of cool.

Disclosure: Admittedly, I now want to travel here in the future to see the impact myself.