Digital Rebrand
The owner of Shaw Farm Stud approached Midlands Online with the goal of creating a new website and full-scale digital rebrand. The content from the original WordPress needed to be exported, however, we had no way of accessing the original database because the website and domain was hosted by someone else who had no point of contact. The client was happy to start afresh, but we advised on a content migration as the old content had formed part of the brand history and identity. This required a site-crawling software that indexed, converted, and downloaded content to HTML pages, including existing images and media. Any errors encountered were recorded on our Project Backlog to be manually rectified as part of our Agile service delivery. This resulted in 100% of the original content being effectively migrated to the new WordPress site using a bulk CSV importer. During Discovery, we interviewed the client to understand their needs and requirements to make an informed decision about what CMS was right for them. We decided that a new WordPress theme would be most appropriate, as it included client friendly features that enabled easier content creation.
Brand Development
Our in-house Graphics Designer met with the client to discuss the brand design, logo ideas and preferred colour schemes. They wanted the colours to emphasise the success and luxury of the brand, which led to the golden horse becoming the focal point of the main logo. The logo was designed using the Cinema 4D application for easier scalability and manipulation of lighting and colours. The rider on the logo could also be added or removed, which gave the client an alternative option if preferred. Certified Pantone colour calibrated equipment helped ensure all printed material was as accurate on-screen as it would be in real life.
The newly developed logo was embroidered on staff clothing, horse saddles and company vehicles as part of the full-scale implementation. This included adding the logo and colour scheme to the £1 million touring bus which transports the riders and staff to various locations internationally. The Shaw Farm Stud branding has also appeared in numerous Olympics (Athens 2004, Beijing 2008) and tournaments across the globe, highlighting the importance of our attention to detail.
Website Development
The Shaw Farm Stud homepage logo was designed in HTML using SVG parts to make it SEO and screen reader friendly. The luxury colours of beige, gold and burgundy were chosen as the predominant brand colours, with burgundy later changed to a white background for accessibility. Shaw Farm Stud is in a production environment on our A+ UK hosted server. As part of our ongoing commitments, we ensure their production environment is as stable as possible and any changes to either environment or product goes through our deployment process, ensuring a clean and secure transition to live. Environmental variables are also implemented so we don’t have to directly edit our code when there are changes to the production environment. This reduces downtime and allows the website to continue running when changes are made.
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