Pikeville Augmented Reality Application
This interactive augmented reality scavenger hunt app was created to celebrate the Pikeville, Kentucky Bicentennial. The app highlights historic locations throughout downtown Pikeville, allowing users to explore where old businesses and landmarks once stood. Through trivia-based clues, users are guided to different spots around the city—then, using their phone's camera, they can view overlaid graphics showing what each location looked like in the past. I had the opportunity to design the AR visuals, creating graphics that blend history with modern technology to offer an engaging and educational experience for the community.
Services
Logo & App Icon Design, Graphic Assets for Locations
Old Photos
The design process began with a collection of vintage photographs showcasing various locations around Pikeville. These images served as the foundation for the AR visuals. One example is Anderson’s Shoe Department Store—a popular spot back in the day known for selling Levi’s jeans and Girl Scout uniforms. Each photo provided valuable visual context and helped inform how I would recreate and enhance these historical scenes for a modern audience through augmented reality.
Current Photos
Next, I visited each of the featured locations to capture current-day photos that would serve as the backdrop for the AR overlays. Since the historical photos would be layered directly on top of these images, it was important to carefully match the angle and perspective of the original shots. This attention to alignment ensured that the past and present visuals would line up seamlessly, creating an immersive and accurate augmented reality experience for users.
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Graphic Assets
Once I had the historical and present-day images aligned, I researched what each location was known for to guide the visual storytelling. This helped me determine what specific elements to include in each overlay. For example, in the Anderson’s Shoe Department Store scene, I incorporated the original street view from the vintage photo along with illustrated assets like Girl Scouts in uniform and a Levi’s jeans graphic. These additions helped bring the history to life in a way that was both visually engaging and contextually meaningful.
Final Result
Using Photoshop, I carefully layered and arranged the historical images and newly created assets to achieve a seamless blend between past and present. The goal was to ensure the vintage visuals fit naturally within the current scenes. Through the app, users can point their phone cameras at these locations to unlock an engaging augmented reality experience, where the historical graphics appear overlaid in real time—bringing Pikeville’s rich history to life.
Splash Screen & App Icon
Along with designing graphics for each location, I was in charge of creating the app icon and splash screen. Since the app itself will include multiple layers of graphics, I wanted to incorporate that into the app icon and splash screen. The app icon features a phone since users will be using their phone to view locations, and a location icon at the bottom to symbolize each point they will travel to. I included shading and layers so that it looks like objects are jumping out at you, similar to the way the graphic assets will perform inside the app.