Home » New annual publication Kuopio by Nature is the city’s business card

New annual publication Kuopio by Nature is the city’s business card

11.6.2020

Kuopio by Nature is the new English-language journal published annually by the city of Kuopio. Resembling a journal, the publication complements the content on the Kuopio Highlights online platform.

The themes of Kuopio by Nature, namely Nature, Live Like Local and Future Kuopio, delve deeper into the name of the journal and represent the double meaning of the Kuopio brand: the city’s closeness to nature and the genuine nature of people, characteristic of the Savo region.

“When planning Kuopio Highlights, we came up with the idea of Kuopio’s very own annual journal, a sort of business card for the city itself, which would provide a comprehensive picture of the city and life in Kuopio. We wanted a publication that our city organization, interest groups and businesses could use when describing our home town,” says Editor-in-chief of the journal, Marketing Director Kirsi Soininen.

Producing the journal was a challenge, but in a good way. Since the Kuopio brand is a sum of many parts, taking the range of perspectives into consideration was a balancing act that required the ability to package all of the information into a concise, entertaining format.

“It was interesting to take part in planning and producing an entirely new form of publication for the city, starting with a clean slate, so to say. Naturally, this meant overcoming challenges along the way in terms of goals and schedules, but it also gave us a chance to think outside the box,” says Communications Designer Reetta Airaksinen who worked as the Executive Editor of the publication.

For the core communication of Kuopio, the greatest challenge and asset is the diversity of the city. The fact that it is difficult to display Kuopio as a city of just one quality or aspect.

“Due to the wide variety of things Kuopio has to offer, it is like a compressed metropolis. This is a great advantage, because the short distances guarantee easy access to services and nature,” says Soininen.

The stunning, quintessentially Finnish lakeside nature surrounding Kuopio was chosen as the main theme of the journal. Soininen and her team began to construct the publication around three elements: hard business facts describing development, soft aspects concerning the atmosphere and family values, and the ease of enjoying leisure time. The goal was to strike a balance between these three elements.

“In my opinion, good numbers are a reflection of good life. Our goal was to create a publication that would make it easy for anyone to describe where people living in Kuopio come from and what Kuopio has to offer to new residents, students and business experts,” Soininen continues.

The final publication has beautiful photographs and descriptive texts, providing a good idea of what being a Kuopio resident essentially means these days.

“It means leading a balanced life close to the nature in the middle of an innovative, efficient work environment where the will to move forward exists in balance with overall wellbeing. In addition to the present day and the future, the journal also touches on the past and describes, for instance, the influence that the author Minna Canth still has on life in her former home town,” says Soininen.

The journal is part of the city’s influencing communication strategy and complements the content on the Kuopio Highlights online platform by providing more extensive articles on life in Kuopio. At the same time, it is also a tangible object that you can bring along to the jetty at a lakeside cottage for a bit of summer reading.

“We plan on publishing a similar annual journal every January from now on. The journal gives readers a sneak peek of the events coming up in Kuopio that year and the highlights that you do not want to miss,” says Soininen.

The journal was produced in cooperation with Kuopio-Tahko marketing.

Read the full publication

Browse the Kuopio Highlights website: https://kuopiohighlights.fi/

Send us feedback: editor@kuopio.fi

Text (in Finnish): Maiju Korhonen