Client
St Lawrence Jewry
One of many cherished City traditions is the granting of Freedom of the City of London. When anyone is made a Freeman of the City of London they are presented with a small book entitled: Rules for the Conduct of Life. This sets out (from a document by a former Lord Mayor, Sir John Barnard c1740) a code of life for those who are Freemen. Despite its age it is as relevant today as any book on leadership and business management. It makes for fascinating reading in today's context of corporate governance, sustainability and social impact.
St Lawrence Jewry is the official Church of the City of London Corporation. As part of its work, this book is published as a modern version of Barnard’s work. With its grounding in Christian values, it tries to put the Rules for the Conduct of Life into plain, simple English for today’s Freemen and others.
We re-designed the new rule book, and wrote the headings that people could relate to such as ‘Rules for life, death and business in between’, ‘Rules for being helpful without meddling’ and ‘Rules for living the high life without being a low life’. The book contains 36 short rules accompanied by references from the Bible. The rules are a moral guide which can be interpreted as a standard, not only for personal behaviour, but for corporate conduct too.
How to ‘live the high life without being a low life’ is just one of twelve modern headlines given to the recently updated ‘Rules for the conduct of life’. To celebrate the launch of the book, we created a series of colourful, limited-edition dust covers to wrap the distinctive, red book.
The book contains 36 short rules accompanied by references from the Bible. To maintain a suitably ecclesial feel, Offenbach Bible paper was used for the text pages whilst gold foil blocking was used for the cover.
A stylised dagger symbol in the form of the Christian cross was used to help describe the rules in a series of footnotes.
The use of the colour red ties in with The City of London Corporation, who also own the church. Whilst working on the project, St Lawrence also wanted us to work on a new identity for them, which involved developing a crest coupled with a new logotype.
The ‘Rules for the Conduct of Life’ is available to purchase from St Lawrence of the Jewry at a price of £10.
I’ve enjoyed giving the Rules a modern make-over, because it’s an often overlooked, gem of a book. It may be a small volume, but it’s big on wisdom and common sense, and if it can make some people in the Square Mile better-rounded, it will have achieved its goal.
Canon David Parrott – St Lawrence
The St Lawrence Lectures
To illustrate its relevance for today's leaders, The Rules for the Conduct of Life formed the basis for a series of lectures given at St Lawrence Jewry by a number of eminent business and public figures. The first, entitled ‘Consider your ways’, was given by Stephen Green, Group Chairman of HSBC.
