Brand Environment Development | Standalone Farm | Bonfire Creative Intelligence

A much-loved family attraction with many generations of local residents enjoying visits to Standalone Farm all year round.

Hundreds of visitors queued to get into the farm on reopening.

Frame
Create
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Owned and managed by The Heritage Foundation, Standalone Farm on the outskirts of Letchworth Garden City, had established itself as a much-loved family attraction with many generations of local residents enjoying visits to Standalone Farm all year round.

Having had minimal investment from The Heritage Foundation for a number of years, it was decided in 2013 to update the whole experience for visitors. Despite still being popular, it was felt that improvements were needed to keep pace with modern leisure trends, such as a more contemporary and enticing food offering, special events organised throughout the year, better merchandising and more interactive and engaging areas for younger children.

The challenge was to ensure that young families continued to visit, and in increased numbers, whilst also widening the appeal of Standalone Farm to a broader local audience, including walkers and cyclists who would regularly use the adjacent Garden City Greenway, a 13.2m circular route around Letchworth Garden City.

Following an initial site visit with the client and our project partners, Bogacki Design, our initial concepts centred around enhancing ‘the charm of the farm’, through a retrospective creative style that would trigger memories of bygone visits. Unlike many similar attractions which are little more than glorified playgrounds, Standalone remains a working farm. It was therefore vital that we created a rustic, eclectic and authentic brand that made it clear the animals remained the main attraction.

Despite the whole site being completely rebranded and redesigned, we wanted to give the impression that the work had evolved over a number of years and been carried out by the farmer himself and his team, as opposed to a branding consultancy. To support the introduction of a new catering outlet in a bespoke space, we created The Greenway Café brand as a standalone concept on the farm. This would help position the new café as a place where walkers, cyclists and others from the local community could come and enjoy a drink, snack or meal without necessarily visiting the rest of Standalone Farm.

From approval of our design concepts we had just four weeks to take the tired, non-descript environment and completely transform it into something vibrant, dynamic and warm.

Working in both 2D and 3D on the branding and interior design elements of the project, we – together with Bogacki Design – created beautiful farmhouse style interiors, installed over 125 colourful and playful signs across the site and translated the design concept consistently across all merchandise, staff uniforms, menus, marketing literature, as well as digitally on the Farm’s website and social media channels.

On opening day, hundreds of people queued to get in to the car park and there was a real buzz of excitement locally about the re-opening of Standalone Farm. Not only has that excitement continued, but the rationale behind The Greenway Café is also bearing fruit, as it slowly but successfully has built up an increasingly steady number of visitors who come to it as a destination in its own right, rather than using the café as part of a visit to the Farm.