Agecroft Hall & Gardens
concept, art direction, visual identity, illustration, merchandise design, publication design, print management, web design, video production
Agecroft Hall & Gardens is a modern day window into Tudor era England. Built in the late 15th century in the historic county of Lancashire, England, the manor was dismantled piece by piece in the 1920s, shipped across the Atlantic, and rebuilt on a 23-acre estate in Richmond, Virginia.
Following the wishes of its matriarch, Bessie Williams Morton, Agecroft went on to debut as a museum in 1969, interpreting life in a Tudor manor house, and sharing its collection of 16th- and 17th-century English furniture, paintings, historical documents, and other artifacts.
After undertaking a thorough brand review strategy with a marketing firm, Agecroft approached us to extend that strategy and develop it into a full rebrand of the organization along with its web presence, public-facing suite of materials, and messaging.
Agecroft’s logo highlights and celebrates the Tudor architectural style that makes it unique in its field while also calling out and representing the gardens of the estate with its iconography. The structures depicted in the logo and simplified versions of the actual hall itself on its southernmost side while the flowers depicted in the greenery represent simplified tulips, for which the gardens are known.
Beyond logo design and development, our agency created a full brandbook for the organization that both provides guidance on use of the logo and its variants and develops a larger brand for Agecroft, providing example products including business cards, ads, stationary, note cards, promotional print materials, and more. We then took the files for many of those example products and created real-world print materials and templates for Agecroft.
In discussing the best way to roll out the new brand and products to Agecroft’s audience, we came upon the idea to hold a celebration of Queen Elizabeth I’s 492nd birthday on September 7, 2025 that could also serve as a brand reveal. Agecroft hosted the free, public event on its grounds with Shakespearean pop-up performances, live Renaissance music, stage combat demonstrations, free garden admission, and audiences & photos with Queen Elizabeth I, portrayed by a local living history actor.
We coordinated the switch over to the newly designed site we created for Agecroft and followed it with a media release and brand reveal video we produced the following week.
