Property Development Branding & Website
Taw Wharf
Taw Wharf is an innovative housing development currently transforming a neglected brownfield site on the banks of the river Taw into a flagship waterside development for North Devon.
Creating high-quality housing and up to 600 jobs in Barnstaple, Taw Wharf is helping to create a real sense of promise for the area's future. We were excited to be tasked with branding this prestigious development.
Brand Discovery
We began, as always, by extensively researching the task at hand, ensuring that we understood the developers' aims and goals, as well as their target audience.
From this we were able to determine the direction in which to take the branding; it was clear that Taw Wharf would require a high-end, yet contemporary brand identity, whilst keeping a thought to the heritage and history of the site and the surrounding area.
Creating a Brand
Having established a solid brief, our graphic designers began creating a plethora of sketches and initial ideas that could be developed and refined into working logos. It was accepted that, due to the waterside nature of the development, the logo would predominantly feature shades of blue, but our designers also incorporated grey and green elements to signify the luxury status of the development and its green credentials, respectively.
Once we had a strong selection of designs, we presented our initial concepts to the client, along with the rationale behind each version. From here, we moved forward by developing the chosen logo proposal, including visuals of the logo in different colour-ways as well as previewing the design on mock advertisements to help refine the design and choose the most suitable colours for the brand identity.
Brand Implementation
Once the design of the logo was agreed upon, we were able to develop the brand identity as a whole. We produced a detailed brand guide to define the use of the logo, as well as the colours and typefaces that would be used by Taw Wharf in any publication or digital platforms, ready to be applied across the range of new products we had begun developing for Taw Wharf, including advertisements, brochures, hoardings and the brand new website.
Cardboard VR Headsets
As part of our marketing strategy, we proposed producing a virtual 360 CGI tour of the properties, which would allow interested parties anywhere in the world to immerse themselves in the developer's vision before a single brick had even been laid.
To promote the tour we designed multiple sets of branded, cardboard VR headsets. The headsets have been used at open days and by the selling agents from the early stages of the build, they are flat packed so can be posted to interested parties anywhere at a relatively low cost.
They've proven to be a superb method of engaging interest both in person and remotely and can even be used in the later phases of the development as video virtual tours of available properties.
Bespoke Website
The website design needed to reflect the high-end, contemporary brand identity we'd created for the development and to provide a smooth user experience to help leave users feeling satisfied and inspired.
Having thoroughly researched the market during the branding exercise, we were well placed to understand the audience and priority of the content. This enabled us to quickly establish the brief and to begin sketching wireframes of how the site could look on both desktop and mobile devices. Once the wireframes were agreed we created high-fidelity proofs to show the stakeholders exactly how the site would look, building a working prototype for them to test, before moving on to the development phase of the build.
Drupal 8 CMS Development
After our initial consultation with the client, it had become clear that the website would need to be released in phases, with various content types such as house specs, CGI's, floorplans and videos not becoming available to publish until further down the line. The website has therefore been launched initially as a basic brochure site, featuring the information available and a signup form, from which prospective buyers can register their interest.
We developed the site using the powerful Drupal 8 framework, which has enabled us to build a Content Management System that allows the stakeholders own marketing team to add new pages, such as house types featuring floorplans, brochures and CGI's, and Virtual Tours as soon as and when they become available.
In addition, we're currently working on an interactive sitemap with clickable elements, which will allow users to navigate the site by plot, displaying key information and links to relevant pages.
