Modern Manor

Charleston elegance, wrought in iron.

Modern Manor sits on Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, in the red barn that used to be Boone Hall Market, right across the road from Boone Hall itself. Inside, independent boutiques and makers share one beautifully styled floor: home décor, fashion, art, jewellery, vintage finds and gifts. There’s a cafe, and a porch with rocking chairs for when you need a minute.

Founder Karen brought a background in interior design and construction, and a very clear picture of the feeling she wanted. We started working together before the doors opened.

Modern Manor needed a whole identity, and a website to carry it.

The brand needed to:

• Feel like Charleston at her most elegant: refined gardens, formed metals, crisp floors, warm woods, whitewash and stone
• Sit comfortably on everything from a shopfront sign to a gift bag to a social post

The website needed to:

• Bring in the people who don’t know about the store yet: visitors to the area, and the kind of high-end makers who’d want a space there (Modern Manor doesn’t sell online, and doesn’t want to)
• Give every vendor a place to be found, with their own page and their own story
• Grow over time with articles, gift guides and seasonal content

BRAND DESIGN

Ironwork, made of M’s

We started with a stylescape to pin down the feeling. From there came an icon built from a series of M’s, worked into the style of wrought iron you see on gates and balconies all over Charleston. Look closely and it’s the initial, over and over.

• The wordmark is set in Palace by Tropical Type, a classical serif with italics, loaded with flourishes, alternates, tall caps and catchwords. We leaned into the swashes for a chic, vintage feel that sits right at home in Charleston
• A nine-colour palette with names to match the store: Iron, White, Wild Sand, Alto, Squirrel, Plum Kitten, Malachite, Infinity and Creme de Peche
• A soft, readable body font (Armin Soft), chosen for its large x-height and rounded terminals, so it stays legible at small sizes and warm at large ones
• A full logo system: horizontal, stacked and icon-only lockups, with and without the “Decor · Apparel · Furniture” tagline, in every colourway, ready for print and web
• Brand in use: signage and packaging mockups, and seasonal marketing like the Holiday Market ad

WEB DESIGN

A shop window for every boutique

• A vendor directory where every boutique gets its own page, filterable by category, with next and previous links so visitors can browse the way they would in store. It’s designed to look good whether or not a vendor has supplied photos
• A blog with categories, search and filters, launched with a full set of articles, for gift guides, trends and what’s new on the floor
• A Google reviews page built with Trustie, our free WordPress reviews plugin, showing the store’s rating across all its Google reviews, with a link through to read the rest on Google
• Copy by Dawn Rieniets
• Photography by Ellis Photo Studio