New Project Launch: Landbird

When you want to travel together with a group of friends, family, or co-workers, what do you do?

Perhaps you get on a plane? Depends how far you’re going, and besides, that can get expensive, not to mention its carbon footprint. Do you pile everyone in your car? Maybe. But maybe your car isn’t big enough for everyone. Maybe you don’t want to use your car for a group road trip.

No, if you want effortless group travel, you should rent a Landbird.

The company started life in 1989 as a regional vehicle rental company in the greater Boston area. In 2011, it was rebranded as Adventure Car and Van Rental and focused on renting vans for large groups. Come 2019, a whole new identity was conceived for the company–Landbird. They chose the name Landbird for its sense of freedom, familiarity, ease, steadfastness, and security. It is a reminder that the journey can be just as rewarding as the destination.

As part of the new Landbird rebranding, they, of course, needed a brand new website. Working with my friends at Magnifico Design, who created the Landbird identity and visual language for the brand, I came on board as the lead developer to build Landbird’s web presence.

The new site was to be built from the ground up. Landbird staff needed to be able to manage the content easily and effectively, and the site needed to seamlessly integrate with their reservation system. We selected WordPress as the content management system on which to build. Rather than shoehorning the content into default WordPress posts, or using some god-awful WYSIWYG page builder, I paired WordPress with Timber and Advanced Custom Fields to create exactly the content models we needed. That way, Landbird staff can confidently update their content without fear of breaking their site. Another benefit to this approach is that I was able to use those content models to craft robust, extensible, accessible, and bulletproof templates which remain true to the new design language.

I had a great experience working with the Landbird team on this project. I love the concept and the new identity, and I’m really proud of what I was able to deliver. When the Coronavirus pandemic has abated and groups of friends will return to the road, they’ll do well to rent a brand new van from Landbird.

In the meantime, they can browse rentlandbird.com and start making their travel plans for when that day comes. Landbird will be there for them.