Forging a new brand and identity, and deepening our commitments
In 2023, the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation’s Board of Directors approved a months-long project to forge a new brand and graphic identity to coincide with its recent name-change and the new leadership of its president, Benjamin Prosky. On October 1, 2024, the Jenrette Foundation launched the new jenrette.org to celebrate its next chapter and carry forward an important legacy of supporting historic preservation, landscapes, and the decorative arts.
As any organization with a rich history knows, changing its outward expression begins with an inward journey that deals with thorny topics like mission and scope. Luckily, the values and principles of this organization’s namesake, Dick Jenrette, who died in 2018, continue to be a north star. It’s a fact reflected in the organization’s name change from the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust to the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, and a fact reflected in its new mission to advance education, innovation, and stewardship in the fields of historic preservation, decorative arts, and historic landscapes.
What’s known as a “knockout logo” inverts the words and images against a saturated background. Here, the typeface TT Rationalist forms the Jenrette Foundation’s name. The typeface you’re reading on this page is called Chivo, which is a complimentary typeface that’s easy to read and perfect for long spans of text.
In 2024, the foundation’s staff and board pursued other important changes, too, such as guiding a new logo, visual identity, website, and communications strategy.
The logo itself—symbolic as it is of an organization's identity—is also an important business tool, whether that’s the business of grantmaking or raising awareness or convening people around an idea. The Jenrette Foundation’s new logomark evokes the composite capital at one of its properties, Millford, which is based on two things: the Corinthian capital at the Erechtheion, on the north side of the Athenian Acropolis, and the representation of that Corinthian capital by Minard LeFever in his 1839 style book “Beauties of Modern Architecture.”
The Jenrette Foundation’s new logomark evokes the composite capital at one of its properties, Millford, inspired by the Erechtheion, as well as Minard LeFever’s 1839 style book “Beauties of Modern Architecture.”
The Jenrette Foundation’s new logomark, which uses the TT Rationalist typeface, compliments the imagery of the abstracted capital, while also representing a font family that can be deployed in other visual communications such as the new website, jenrette.org, and on social media. TT Rationalist is joined by a complimentary typeface, too, called Chivo—and both are deployed to be recognizable and unique, as well as legible in all possible contexts.
These new aspects to the Jenrette Foundation’s brand and identity create a strong infrastructure to enrich its partnerships and pursue its grantmaking programs, as well as pursue the new storylines and research developing within historic architecture, landscapes, and the decorative arts. You will hear more about the ways in which the American landscape shapes our contributions to the built environment, such as Ayr Mount’s “Great Trading” Path or its archeological discoveries. You will hear about the ways small things, like cut nail patterns, lead to big changes in how we think about the design and construction of Millford’s outbuildings. You will also hear more about how new classes of Thompson Fellows have reinterpreted 19th century life, craftways, design, and restoration at Edgewater, one of the most important homes of the Hudson River Valley.
“The mission, the name change, and now the new website and our new visual identity allow us to more profoundly communicate and tell the stories that matter to us,” says Benjamin Prosky, the Jenrette Foundation’s president, “and that includes our partner organizations and the many people, from students to professionals, who we work with to advance the work started by Dick Jenrette, himself.”
In the coming weeks and months, keep watching the Jenrette Foundation for more about new and existing partnerships, as well as more stories about the future of the historic architecture, landscapes, and decorative arts that enrich all our lives. And, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
(And, if you’re interested, you can download the Jenrette Foundation’s brand guidelines offering more detail about the logo.)