Communicating clarity for a city in transition.

Bristol City Council is leading an ambitious programme of regeneration across the city, from transforming its western gateway at Cumberland Basin to reimagining how people move through the city centre.

Hayes Davidson partnered with the Council on two key projects, Western Harbour and 'Bristol on the Move', to help shape how these complex proposals were shared and understood by the public.

At Western Harbour, the challenge was to communicate a bold new vision for the area - replacing the existing web of roads with a connected, human-centred neighbourhood of homes, public spaces and restored ecology. Working with architects, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and the Council team, we produced a film to support public consultation on the draft masterplan. From the outset, our focus was on accessibility and tone: to make the information clear, conversational and open to dialogue.

We designed a visual language that felt inviting rather than authoritative - layered and sketch-like, with a tracing paper aesthetic suggesting ideas in progress, not final answers. We took inspiration from local artists, including Sam Pierpoint, rooting the visual style in local cultural references.

The narrative was structured around lived experience rather than policy detail, showing how the transformation could benefit everyone, from residents to cyclists and local businesses. This approach helped position the masterplan as a shared opportunity, not an imposed change.

Building on that success, our collaboration on 'Bristol on the Move' tackled another layer of complexity - a city-wide strategy to rethink the way people travel through Bristol over the next decade. The brief was ambitious: to simplify an intricate transport masterplan, filled with technical language and multiple moving parts, into something the public could genuinely relate to.

We began by dissecting the Council’s original brief and reordering it into a clear, human story. The emphasis shifted from data and diagrams to the everyday details of how streets, pavements and public spaces will feel and function. Working collaboratively with the Council’s team, we removed jargon, clarified priorities and built a visual and narrative flow that allowed the audience to follow the story intuitively. The resulting digital campaign and short film formed the centrepiece of an accessible public consultation, shared across web and social media to encourage feedback and engagement.

Both projects demonstrate our belief that effective visual communication is as much about empathy as it is about design. When communities are invited to imagine change, not just shown it, they can become active participants in shaping their city’s future.

As Bristol City Council reflected:

“We’ve really enjoyed working with Hayes Davidson across two projects. They have been consistently responsive, engaged, and quick to get to grips with complex briefs. The quality of their work, especially during the storyboarding process, has been strong and has helped us refine and shape the final narrative.

It has been a positive collaboration. The first project, now complete, received encouraging feedback through a public engagement process, and we are looking forward to seeing the final results of the second.”