Rethinking the visual communication of the place brand: A contemporary role for chorography?

Abstract

This chapter considers a potential role for chorography in the representation of urban places for marketing purposes, through an exploratory case study investigating how the city of Liverpool in the north-west of England is represented visually in promotional material of three agencies with some responsibility for its marketing. A number of visual representations of the city that can be classified as chorographic are analysed. This analysis highlights the contexts within which profile and oblique methods of viewing are used, and the importance of structures with associative properties with the place, which can be viewed as synecdoche. The chapter concludes with some suggestions as to how chorography might inform the visual content of place marketing messages and a discussion of the implications for the representation of urban places arising from current advances in geographical information systems technology.