Neighborhood
Guides Project
Creating a branded take-home experience that strengthens client engagement beyond lease signing.
Editorial Design, Print Design, Branding, Marketing
Fall 2025
Project Overview
Problem:
Most client interactions ended after lease signing and key pickup, creating few opportunities to maintain engagement. The team needed a take-home piece that would provide ongoing value while reinforcing its identity as a locally rooted Philadelphia real estate company.
Goal:
Create an informative and visually engaging guide system that helps residents discover local businesses, amenities, and attractions while extending the brand experience beyond the transaction.
Brief:
Design a series of branded neighborhood guide booklets that introduce new residents to Philadelphia communities while serving as a valuable post-move-in resource.
Audience:
New residents and tenants, primarily young professionals and adults in their 20s–40s. Typically relocating within or to Philadelphia and looking to connect with their new neighborhood and community.
Process & Research
Research:
I spoke with leasing agents to understand common post-move-in questions and found a consistent pattern: new residents frequently asked for recommendations on nearby restaurants, cafés, and grocery stores during their first few days in the neighborhood.
This aligned with my own experience moving into a new home, where immediate needs typically center around food, essentials, and quickly getting oriented.
Strategy:
The insights pointed to an opportunity to create a small, practical guide that residents could use immediately after receiving their keys. I focused on highlighting nearby food and grocery options as the most relevant first-touch information.
To encourage retention, I designed the booklet in a compact format that could be easily stored in a kitchen drawer or kept on display in the home, ensuring it remained a useful reference beyond move-in while reinforcing the brand’s presence.
Early project planning notes, goals, and layout explorations. Click any image to expand.
Final Deliverables
Outcome
The project was a success and became one of my key highlights in my annual review as a fully self-led initiative, with creative & marketing direction from my advisor Pat Fahy. The neighborhood guides were quickly adopted as a standard inclusion in new tenant take-home packets.
Leasing agents consistently noted that the guides were well-received and became an easy conversation tool when discussing local restaurant and neighborhood recommendations with new residents. The compact format also helped it stand out within the take-home folder, which primarily consisted of standard 8.5x11 lease documents, making it an immediate and accessible reference upon opening.
Following the addition of a QR code linking to review submissions, we observed an estimated ~25–35% increase in scans, which correlated with a noticeable uptick in positive tenant reviews based on internal analytics. This reinforced the guide’s role not only as an informational resource, but also as a tool that encouraged engagement and feedback.
Ultimately, the neighborhood guides became a staple of the onboarding experience, helping reinforce the company’s identity as a locally rooted, independent Philadelphia brokerage with deep neighborhood expertise.
