Gateway Arch

Elevating the Gateway Arch as a global icon

WEBSITE

For more than six decades, the Gateway Arch has defined the St. Louis skyline. We brought that same sense of scale and forward momentum to an online experience.

Paradigm partnered with the Gateway Arch to evolve its digital experience for more than 1.6 million annual visitors. As the park and its attractions expanded, the website needed to better reflect the scale of the destination while making trip planning easier and more accessible.

The redesign prioritized stronger visual design, ADA accessibility and clearer pathways to both ticketed and free experiences. We restructured navigation into a streamlined mega menu, expanded attraction content into dedicated pages and implemented an internal linking strategy to help users seamlessly explore related areas of the park.

Our team also worked closely with the Galaxy ticketing platform to create a cohesive transition between the website and the purchasing experience, aligning design while preserving functionality. Behind the scenes, development focused on performance, custom content components and accessibility best practices, resulting in an intuitive, inclusive experience that mirrors the significance of this iconic national landmark.

SIGHTS ABOVE, STORIES BELOW

Before “Sights Above, So Much Below,” there was “Stories Below” — a campaign designed to draw visitors to a world-class, free Museum.

It started with the Paradigm team standing at the drawing board — outlining possible themes and taglines to direct our campaign design, content and strategy. And so, the Sights Above, Stories Below campaign emerged to highlight both the beautiful views everyone knows from above and to draw visitors’ attention to what lies beneath — a world-class museum.

Our copywriters developed content centered around the history held within the six innovative and inclusive galleries in the Museum. Through social media posts, print advertising, video and radio spots, we produced content that revealed interesting details and encouraged more visitors to spend hours or even a whole day discovering something new. Our design team utilized imagery from the past and present to create black-and-white and color images with swipeable details about the museum. They also used vibrant Gateway Arch imagery to showcase the monument we all know and love, with a colorful arrow drawing the eye to what lies beneath its iconic view.

MEET THE BUILDERS

Each year, the Gateway Arch invites the engineers, trade workers and support crew responsible for its construction to St. Louis for a day of education and celebration with visitors.

These men and women have incredible stories to share about how this one-of-a-kind structure defied the odds and became a reality. And as they get older, we wanted to make sure their stories of ambition and determination are preserved for a new generation.

We partnered with the Arch’s historian to conduct a series of video interviews with the builders who attended the 2019 Meet the Builders event. We designed questions that would prompt recollections and storytelling from the builders and paired their responses with historical photos and modern-day footage of the monument they helped construct. The Gateway Arch is a part of history, and not just for St. Louis. As a travel and tourism marketing agency, we knew that capturing these stories would help preserve a piece of national history and connect visitors to the Arch in a more human way.

COVID-19 RESPONSE

The global tourism industry took a massive hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Arch was no different.

After closing for several weeks due to St. Louis’ stay-at-home orders, the Arch was ready to reopen. But, like any destination during the pandemic, things wouldn’t look quite the same.

Travel declined significantly with the pandemic, and as a tourism marketing agency, we were dedicated to helping the Arch recover. We worked with the Arch team to support a redesigned visitor experience that balanced safety and discovery. We started by designing a new series of wayfinding signage, including posters and floor markers, to help visitors move through the facility safely. The signage was essential for conveying information about mask policies, payment information, foot traffic flow and social distancing protocols.

We also directed a series of instructional videos showcasing the new safety precautions for attractions like the museum and the Tram Ride to the Top. These videos were critical to overcoming the public perception that visiting the Arch wasn’t safe during the pandemic. The Gateway Arch team played these videos on screens throughout the facility and promoted them on social media.

FRIGHTS & HEIGHTS

Through our work as a St. Louis tourism marketing agency, we’ve learned this town loves holidays.

All the great St. Louis cultural institutions host unique holiday events, such as Boo in the Zoo at the St. Louis Zoo or Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. But when it comes to the Arch, it’s normally business as usual. As part of a broader strategy to reconnect local St. Louisans with the Arch, we created an event called Freights & Heights.

Freights & Heights offered a one-of-a-kind night at the Arch, where families could visit and participate in all kinds of games and activities, including a haunted tram ride and balloon animals. We supported the event with a logo design, promotional signage and social media posts. We even designed an activity book, featuring custom illustrations of Halloween characters that took kids through word searches, crosswords and coloring pages. Once again, working as a travel and tourism marketing agency for such a special St. Louis attraction has been an invaluable experience.