Ashmere Place Brand

Services

Brand Identity, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Design, Naming

Sector

Property & Placemaking

Transforming a modern garden city into a distinctive destination

The Brief

Countryside required a placemaking brand proposition for Ashmere, with a distinctive visual language to clearly stand out from the housebuilding competition at Ebbsfleet Garden City. The identity needed to conjure a sense of peaceful reflection, choice and discovery; rooted in a sophisticated, aspirational feel and its nourishing, natural setting.

Background

Up to 30,000 people will work in the green, modern and well-connected environment of Ebbsfleet Garden City, with Ashmere destined to be a jewel in the crown of the development. Built into a quarry site, it offers unique landscape features such as white chalk-like cliffs overlooking a manmade lake.

The Solution

Ashmere is a place that invites you to explore, to shift pace, slow down and notice the details of life. A place to reconnect with nature and reconnect with one another. Working alongside Placemaker, we developed a concept that revealed these details in the same way the site is revealed from the quarry; carved from the very stone itself.

Transforming a modern garden city into a distinctive destination

The Brief

Background

The Brief

The Solution

Clean cut

The clean, modern calligraphic typography was selected to evoke the chiselled feel of letters cut into stone. The name Ashmere means “Ash (trees) by the water”; so in the logo a natural leaflike curvature is cut into the S, while the E also has subtle modifications to evoke the ripples of the water of the lake.

Find your moment

Ashmere’s visual identity brings the etymology of its name to life in a short vignette. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves of an ash tree, causing a single leaf to separate and drift downwards onto the restful waters. The whole scene is rendered in the iconic white stone of the quarry.

Find your way

Signage and wayfinding continued the theme of natural materials. White stone and light woods are used to create a signage with a sense of permanence, that will age and patina with the surrounding environment.

Find your name

Just like the overarching development name, for phases and neighbourhoods we adopted a convention that blended trees and water. This aligned and unified the brand on both a verbal and visual level, while also strengthening rationale and underpinning our wider marketing framework.

Ashmere connectivity double page brochure spread

Ashmere outdoor double page brochure spread

Ashmere allotments double page brochure spread

Find your place

Ashmere’s verbal brand goes hand in hand with its visual identity and real-world development. A calm, mature and sophisticated nature underlines a tone that has family, familiarity and inclusivity at heart. The ‘Find your…’ concept transcends lifestyles and practical guarantees, offering a messaging framework that can evolve at the same pace as its residents.

“As part of a new and vibrant garden city, Ashmere needed to feel aspirational and tranquil in equal measure, while still being distinctive enough to stand out from developments close by. From immersion through to execution, Better’s process and team understood the development and felt empowered by its potential as well as the wider area. The result is a brand that elevates Ashmere as a unique place where your own space and your own pace allow you to reconnect and refresh.”

Victoria Finch

Sales Director, South East Region, Clarion Housing