Work/Embassy of the Free Mind

Embassy of the Free Mind

A new home for one of Europe's oldest collections of hermetic and freethinking texts. Built to welcome visitors, sell tickets, and open up a rare library.

embassyofthefreemind.com

The Embassy of the Free Mind holds a world-class collection of hermetic texts. Its old site got in the way: hard to navigate, single language, and cut off from ticketing and the library catalogue.

Frond rebuilt the museum's site as a modern web app. The content structure matches how the museum actually publishes: exhibitions, news, the Codex Hermeticus newsletter, partners and FAQs. The result honours the material and runs the daily work of the place.

Client

Embassy of the Free Mind

Services

Brand & Art Direction

UX / UI Design

Web Development

Bilingual CMS

Accessibility (WCAG AA)

Visit live site

The build, at a glance

Pages

Custom pages designed across the project.

Integrations

Commerce, search and catalogue systems wired together.

Languages

Fully bilingual. Dutch and English, end to end.

Video assets

Background and editorial films, lazy-loaded with play and pause handling.

Tech & integrations

Next.js

Vercel

Weglot / i18n

Ticket Tailor

Stripe

CookieYes (GDPR)

Google Analytics

Zapier

BPH Source Library API

Before

Dated design that under-served the collection
Not accessible to all visitors
Single language only
Ticketing and the library catalogue lived elsewhere

After

Editorial, content-rich design
WCAG AA built in from the foundations
Full Dutch / English parity
Ticketing, membership and the Source Library on-site

The front door

Entering the world of the Embassy

The homepage sets the tone. A calm, editorial way in that introduces the museum, shows what is on, and points visitors toward tickets, exhibitions and the library. It never feels like a database.

A house full of free minds.

Content model

A space for knowledge, reading and visiting

Exhibitions, news, editorial pieces, partners and FAQs all run on one system, editable in-house in both Dutch and English. Every template was built to make a complex institution easy to browse.

Film & motion

Original films, made for the Embassy

Beyond the build, we made a set of short films for the museum. Motion pieces that bring the building and the collection to life across the site and on social.

The faces on the façade

The carved heads above the front door, filmed and composited into a looping portrait.

Two thousand years of images

Artworks and illuminations from the collection, cut into one flowing reel.

About page · The seven pillars

Honouring the pillars meant making something special

The seven pillars sit at the heart of how the Embassy tells its story, and the team felt they deserved more than a list. We answered with a celestial wheel: the pillars set in slow orbit, turning the About page into a small piece of cosmology.

embassyofthefreemind.com/about