Client: Cliveden Hotel Ltd
Project: Cliveden Brand Identity & Marketing Collateral
Cliveden is an English country house and estate in Berkshire. The Italianate house sits 40 metres above the banks of the River Thames and its grounds slope down to the river. The estate is comprised of 375 acres of beautiful gardens and woodlands. Once the home of a Prince of Wales, two Dukes, an Earl and the Viscounts Astor, the present Grade 1 listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sunderland. In 1942 the Astors gave Cliveden to the National Trust, on condition that the family could continue to live there for as long as they wished. Following the death of the 3rd Viscount Astor in 1966 the National Trust took over its management and Cliveden had several uses until, in 1985, it began its life as a 5-star luxury hotel.
We were subsequently commissioned to design marketing collateral for the Spring Cottage at Cliveden, which dates back to 1857, and toiletries packaging for The Bath House at the hotel.
We were commissioned to develop a brand identity which would encapsulate Cliveden’s grandeur, heritage and status as an icon of country house hospitality, stylish entertainment and gracious living. Following a deep immersion in the house’s history and architecture we devised an identity consisting of a coronet, back-to-back ‘Cs’ and delicate scrollwork accompanied by flower heads. The design was inspired by wrought ironwork in the estate gates we discovered during our visit to the house and by panels and radiator grills in parts of the house. The brandmarque is accompanied by a wordmarque employing a redrawn classic serif typeface. Particular attention was paid to how the identity would reproduce using techniques like embossing and debossing, so that marketing collateral had a luxurious tactile quality.
