Gull Meadow Farms is an adventure farm in Richland, Michigan. Perfect for fall fun, family adventures, and date nights, many people build their annual traditions around Gull Meadow Farms. From apple and pumpkin picking to corn mazes to apple cannons, slides, and over 30 other attractions, Gull Meadow Farms has something for everyone. Emberly actually developed a previous version of the Gull Meadow Farms website, based on their previous brand identity. However, in 2024, the Gull Meadow Farms team knew it was time for a refresh, and approached Emberly about a full branding overhaul. The Emberly team began from the ground up, starting with the Gull Meadow Farms logo. The previous version of the logo was reminiscent of a commercial farm rather than a destination for adventure. We began the discovery process, identifying the visual style and messaging we would need to make the logo perfect for Gull Meadow Farms customers and potential customers. The logo needed to pop. It needed to be recognizable. It needed to draw in a family demographic, it needed to be fun for kids, yet needed to be sophisticated enough to be appreciated by a cultured date-night audience. Our team tried many versions of the logo—tree logos that were all-too-cliche. Pumpkins. Monkeys, rhinos, and bugs. Then came the goat. Since Gull Meadow Farms actually has goats onsite, but the goat couldn't create confusion (as could a monkey, leading to the impression that Gull Meadow Farms was a zoo), the goat was perfect. Goats are nimble, fun, adventurous, playful, and perfect mascots for a farm. We iterated on the goat many times—making it younger, older, more stoic, more playful, and adding in other elements. Then, we got it. The team knew it when we had it—the new goat mascot, and the new logo for Gull Meadow Farms, was born. From there, Emberly crafted a full brand identity—a new color palette that would be fresh, vibrant, and engaging. The color palette says "autumn" without falling into the cliched use of oranges and reds. The new brand pops, and includes fun wavy elements and Instagram-like photo sections. The Emberly team built the new website as a custom Shopify theme, developed from scratch using Liquid, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. This custom theme used the 2.0 architecture to build sections and blocks, meaning that the Gull Meadow Farms team can easily build and modify pages. The block editing interface means full pages can be built in minutes, with excellent brand consistency and lightning-fast loading speed for the end user. The new Gull Meadow Farms theme has all the benefits of custom code, with none of the limitations of using templates. Emberly Digital is excited to unveil the new Gull Meadow Farms, and we're looking forward to fall—you can be sure to find our team there.
