Stephens House & Gardens
Repositioning this historic house with a rename, rebrand, and ongoing communications design.
Working with the management team since 2013, we began with a rename and rebrand celebrating the house’s historic owner. This repositioning proved pivotal – securing Heritage Lottery Fund backing to reinstate the gardens, redevelop the play area, and create a visitor centre. As the site has grown year on year, we have continued to support with visitor materials, venue hire, fundraising, signage, and website design. We relish the challenge of delivering cost-effective, high-impact solutions that drive successful campaigns, events, and visitor engagement.
- Sectors and services
- Heritage
- Brand presence
- Digital + Film
- Exhibition + Signage
Rename and rebrand
Avenue House Estate is a Grade II listed house with extensive gardens. Following a precarious history, the estate is now financially stable and engaged with HLF on grant funding to restore its unique gardens to their former glory and create a visitor centre with better facilities. We worked with a steering committee of staff, trustees, volunteers and friends of the house to rename the site to Stephens House & Gardens. The new identity and brand language reflects the history of the house, bequeathed to the public by Henry ‘Inky’ Stephens of the Stephens’ Ink company, and makes for a more memorable identity to new visitors.
The rebrand was extremely well received by the local community and noted by the HLF assessors as a key asset for the charity going forward.
“Fit Creative helped steer Stephens House & Gardens through naming, branding, and our key marketing tool – a new responsive website which looks great on all devices and really encapsulates what our offer is all about. What I really value apart from their creativity is a proactive approach to new initiatives, along with sound pragmatic thinking, which often turns a rough idea into something well-rounded and finally into a tangible reality.”
Malcolm Godfrey
General Manager
Stephens House & Gardens
Website
A responsive website design and build allowed the client to promote the various ways in which visitors can engage with the house, through visiting, hiring, learning and supporting. The strong 'inky' brand language is carried through in illustrations and a bright colour palette.
Attraction promotions
From the launch of the new brand, we have continued to work with the team at Stephens to promote the attraction to visitors, the local community and corporate organisations.
We have developed several key items of literature, including the visitor leaflet, children's tree trail leaflet and visitor guide book. Ongoing leaflets promote the range of events at the house and gardens, designed with a flexible format that allows us to adjust as per the events calendar changes.
Our long-standing relationship with the client means they regularly turn to us to develop a flyer or poster to promote an event at the house or in the gardens. We enjoy employing the distinctive brand language in a playful way, which attracts attention and has meant that all their events are a sellout.
Merchandising enables the charity to increase their income from visitors. We created a number of merchandise designs and sourced appropriate production companies, as well as negotiating costs. In addition, a souvenir guide was designed and printed.
Fundraising
As a free attraction, it is important to continue to fundraise to support maintaining the Gardens.
We have produced a variety of tools to promote support, from engaging garden signs to Friends membership and legacy literature. A campaign to raise specific funds at the 100th anniversary year of the gardens bequeathed for the benefit of the public – ‘100 in 100’ – for which we created the name and marketing tools.
Venue hire marketing
Venue hire of the spaces for events provides an additional valuable income stream to the trust. We produced a set of marketing tools to present the opportunities for corporate events, family celebrations and filming companies. Stephens has even appeared on Antiques Roadshow!
Signage
Supporting Stephens House & Gardens in completing a HLF grant to reinstate the gardens and make them more accessible with new directional signage and interpretation signs around the grounds. We designed all of the enamel sign graphics and branding.
