Deus Ex Machina

What we did

  • WordPress CMS Website Development
  • Shopify CMS Website Development
  • Website Hosting Server Optimisation
  • DNS Optimisation
  • Maintain Event Legacy UX / Style Guide
  • Optimise Event Experience Across Multiple Software Platforms

The Client

Deus ex Machina (god from the machine) roared into Australia’s cultural consciousness in 2006, with some neatly customised motorcycles and a quaint notion that doing something is more fun than just owning something. Deus ex Machina is a step bigger than a brand: it’s a culture.

Deus (“day-us”) didn’t set out only to sell custom parts and hand-built motorcycles, but to celebrate a culture of creativity. The Deus ex Machina showroom/cafe/headquarters in Sydney immediately became a shrine to ‘run-what-you-brung’ resourcefulness and street-honest industrial art.

The Deus philosophy recalls an era before the various pursuits of fun – motorcycling, surfing, skateboarding, whatever – were marketed into fundamentalist factions. All are welcomed under the Deus roof, where there’s simply respect for the honesty and enjoyment of the machine. Inclusiveness, authenticity, enthusiasm. It’s a simple and sincere pitch that has winged Deus ex Machina across the world. Deus ex Machina says simply there’s no ‘right way’ to do individualism, its all the same juice.

The Brief

Deus Ex Machina approached COG Branding with a brief to deliver the responsive WordPress website design and development for the Bike Build Off event.

The brief from Deus to COG was pretty simple, build a global website that allows the hundreds of competition entrants to upload their content (images and descriptions of the motorbikes they built) and for the Deus brand to showcase the key locations in which the Bike Build Off event. These being Sydney, Venice Los Angeles, Tokyo Japan, Bali Indonesia and Milan Italy.

A WordPress CMS, some domain management trickery and some hosting debacles, the hurdles to overcome made it a challenging project from the start.

When you get a brief from a design powerhouse like Deus Ex Machina and Carby Tuckwell
you don’t wana blow it.

The Solution

The approach focused on simplicity to allow a dynamic content from the global bike builder community to be showcased online to celebrate the amazing collaborative the Bike Build Off is. 

The website had a Shopify shopping engine and WordPress CMS (a bit messy – we inherited something a bit interesting in the back end). The CMS needed to be designed to allow the competition entrants to upload their material via the CMS securely and into the right geographic location. The key focus was to allow the entrants to upload their content, and then enable the judges to easily manage the content to discover the winners.

With the mobile device key to the user experience for both brand advocate and competition entrant, the project had COG Branding being mobile first in our development and design approach.

The Results

A mobile responsive and secure WordPress CMS platform, robust to handle global uploads and management of content. Enabling the Bike Build Off event to continue being a successful event!

When you’ve got exceptional design and a ridiculously deep pool from the global motorbike builder community – all we had to do was turn up with our A game. COG Branding provided Deus Ex Machina with UX Design, WordPress Development and superior Aftercare. Bike Build Off still continues today as a growing global event.

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