Lochness Games
The Glenurquhart Highland Gathering & Games has brought the community together since 1945, when a public meeting in Drumnadrochit's Blairbeg Hall set the whole tradition in motion. Over the past years, the Games had grown well beyond what its identity and website were built to carry: bigger crowds, more events, and now the first-ever World Female Heavy Events Championship, all trying to fit through a digital front door that hadn't kept pace. As a member of the Glenurquhart community ("I've been calling Drumnadrochit my home for almost five years now"), I took the assignment pro bono to refresh the brand, design the event's new merchandise, and rebuild the website so the Games' story, tradition, and history have a worthy home to represent them.
Starting with eighty years of history gave me the inspiration I needed
Before any design work began, I spent time in the Games' history: the 1945 founding meeting, the lean years in the late 1950s when the event's future was genuinely in doubt, the shift from professional to amateur competition, the 75th anniversary return after the COVID years, and the Celtic artwork tradition that's appeared in the programme every year since 1946. None of that could be treated as background trivia. It's what makes this event matter to the people who show up for it, and it needed to come through in how the site felt, not just what it said.
Designing for every generation that shows up on the day
The Games draw a genuinely wide crowd from all around the world: competitors, families with young kids, longtime locals, first-time visitors, and volunteers who've been involved for decades. A clever but fiddly website would have failed half of them. We designed around clarity and ease first, a structure simple enough for a first-time visitor planning a day out and a returning volunteer checking sign-up details to both find what they need without friction, regardless of age or how comfortable they are online.
How we redesigned the games and brought tradition into a changing world
The Games' logo was never generic Highland iconography; it's built around the iconic Urquhart Castle and “mythical” Nessie, two images that are genuinely, specifically Glenurquhart rather than something that could belong to any Highland event in Scotland. I kept that core intact and refreshed how it was executed: cleaner linework, more consistent application across print, web, and signage, and a new colour palette rooted in the landscape and history of the Games rather than chosen for trend, respecting eighty years of the past while giving the identity room to work properly across new touchpoints. I also extended that refreshed identity into a small run of event merchandise, caps, tote bags, and t-shirts, giving visitors something to take home that felt like it genuinely belonged to the Games rather than generic festival swag.
A website built around what visitors actually need to find
I rebuilt the site with a user experience-first structure organised around real visitor questions: when and where the Games are on, how to get there and park, what's in the programme, how to buy tickets, how to volunteer, and how local businesses can get involved through sponsorship or trade stalls. Every section was designed to be found in a click or two, with clear, plain-language content throughout, no jargon, no clutter, so the site works as well for a first-time visitor as it does for a committee member checking logistics the week of the event.
I rebuilt the site with a user experience-first structure organised around real visitor questions: when and where the Games are on, how to get there and park, what's in the programme, how to buy tickets, how to volunteer, and how local businesses can get involved through sponsorship or trade stalls. Every section was designed to be found in a click or two, with clear, plain-language content throughout, no jargon, no clutter, so the site works as well for a first-time visitor as it does for a committee member checking logistics the week of the event.
