MyStride: shipping-container booth for outdoor horse shows

A booth that arrives on a truck and opens in minutes

MyStride, an app for horse owners, barns and professionals, wanted a stand it could take from one horse show to the next: a 6 m shipping container that travels closed, then opens along its sides into a walk-in booth with a deck, kiosks and a sign you can read across the showground.

Before anything was fabricated the team needed to see it, decide how it should open and how it should be branded, and have images good enough to show the idea to others. This case study follows the container booth from the first brief to eight final renders, four camera angles each in daylight and at dusk.

Drag to compare day and dusk. The main approach view: doors raised as canopies, decks folded down, kiosks in use.

The challenge

The booth did not exist yet, and most of its design was still open: how many doors, how they hinge, where the sign sits, which brand colours lead, what goes on the roof. Each of those choices changes how the stand looks from a distance and how visitors move through it, and they are expensive to change once steel is cut.

Our approach

We built the container to its real size, 6 × 2.35 × 2.45 m, and used the 3D model as the place to make decisions. Each round of feedback became a set of options rendered side by side: door layouts, sign positions, colour balance and lighting. Once the design was settled we placed it in an outdoor horse show and lit every view twice, for day and for dusk.

• 6 × 2.35 × 2.45 mContainer size, modelled to scale
• 8Final renders
• 4Camera angles
• Day + duskTwo lighting setups per angle

Design decisions worked out in 3D

Most of the project was spent choosing between options that are hard to judge on paper:

• Doors. We compared two half-doors with a single full-length door on each side. The full-length door lifts on struts to become a canopy, and a fold-down deck extends the floor beneath it.
• Roof sign. A sign facing both ways overlapped itself from some angles and became hard to read, so we tested solid backing boards, then moved to dimensional letters with the carrot logo and a lowercase wordmark that light up after dark.
• Colour. The scheme was simplified to a light container with orange carried by the end doors, deck edges and details, keeping the brand purple for the sign and graphics.
• Door graphics. The full logo on the doors was replaced by the line "Live for the Barn", which reads when the doors are raised.
• Floor and ceiling. Timber flooring was turned to run lengthwise, and the ceiling gained recessed downlights and a linear light.
• Front panel. A flat panel was changed to a corrugated profile so it matches the rest of the container.

Close view from the end of the container at a busy show, with the orange end doors and the ceiling lighting visible.

A roof that keeps the booth running off-grid

Showgrounds do not always offer power or a reliable connection, so the roof carries flat solar panels over most of its area and a satellite internet dish. The dish was modelled from the manufacturer's published dimensions, so its size and proportions on the roof are the real ones.

From above: solar panels, the satellite dish and the rooftop sign, with "Live for the Barn" on the raised door.

Placed in a real horse show setting

A booth rendered on an empty lawn says little about how it will feel on the day. For the final set each camera was matched to an outdoor show setting, with marquees, horse trailers, spectators and riders, and the lighting on the model was aligned to the scene. People were placed where they would actually stand: staff at the two phone kiosks and the hat counter, visitors stepping up onto the deck, a rider walking a horse past.

Every view was then produced twice. The daylight version shows the booth as most visitors will see it; the dusk version shows how the interior lighting and the lit sign carry it into the evening.

Front view, straight on, with the marquee behind and a rider passing.

The result

Eight final renders at 5504 px wide: four camera angles, each in daylight and at dusk with the sign and interior lit. The set shows the booth open and in use, with visitors at the kiosks, riders passing and the show going on behind it.

What the render set is for

With the full set the team can show the booth to fabricators, show organisers and partners as a finished thing, open and busy, from the approach, from the front, from above and up close, by day and by night.

The same approach works for any pop-up or mobile stand: container shops, trailer stages, kiosks and roadshow units that need to be agreed before they are built.