Communication Design for Urban Environment. Formats for an accessible communication of places

We can observe two important changes that involve many territorial realities. On the one hand their identity is constantly changing, causing a progressive loss of the sense of belonging. On the other, tourism industry registers an increased interest in experiences which involve at the same time natural, cultural and social aspects of the place. In this context, the communication design for urban environment needs to find new paradigms in order to deal with the ongoing changes. The direction suggested in this paper regards the topic of the ‘communicative access’, intended as a tool to make the urban space comprehensible. In this sense, communication design becomes a meeting point between a functional communication (for the orientation) and the design of in-depth contents at different levels - from the cartographic representation to the ‘perceived space’. Therefore, the suggested design approach is focused on the development of formats and tools for the re-semanticization of places by means of unconventional points of view. The design effort regards content and languages, searching for new interlinks between storytelling and physical spaces.