Logo design for Huddersfield businesses

Painted letters, light on dark

Kirklees Council's shopfront design guidance for the Huddersfield Town Centre Conservation Area, dated October 2024, describes the fascia it wants to see. Hand-painted lettering in a traditional typeface, such as a serif, in a light colour against a dark background. Lettering no taller than two-thirds of the fascia. It finds shiny Perspex signs fixed to the board unsuccessful, and says internally illuminated fascias are not appropriate in historic areas and will be resisted. Check the current version with the council before you order a sign. Councils designate conservation areas under section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, and this guidance covers the Huddersfield Town Centre Conservation Area only.

Your logo does not have to be a serif to work there, but it has to survive being painted by hand. That rules out gradients, glows and hairline strokes, and it means the logo must hold in one light colour on a dark board. Every logo we deliver includes a single-colour version, and we check the wordmark reversed out of a dark ground, at the shallow height a fascia allows, before you sign it off.

Read next: Shopfront signage design

One hanging sign, and a symbol on it

The guidance allows one hanging sign for every shopfront, in painted timber or cast metal on a proper bracket, and says projecting box signs are not acceptable in the conservation area. It goes further than most councils on what should hang there: trade symbols, such as the chemist's pestle and mortar or the optician's glasses, are encouraged and generally preferred to projecting signs.

That is a logo brief in one sentence. The best symbol for a Huddersfield shop is one a passer-by can read without words: a shape that says what you do and could be cut from a board or cast in metal. Look at the identities from our studio further down this page. A dog holding its own lead says dog walker, and three slate courses say roofer, before anyone reads the name. Every logo includes an icon-only layout for exactly this job.

Colours from the street

Most shopfronts in Huddersfield are from the 19th century, the guidance notes, and earthy colours were generally popular then: dark reds, greens and browns. It encourages them, and accepts alternatives that keep the wider street coherent. The government's guide to advertisement control (Outdoor advertisements and signs: a guide for advertisers, June 2007, so check the current rules) says a council deciding an advertisement application may weigh only amenity and public safety, and that many councils adopt policy statements on what they regard as relevant.

So a bright corporate colour picked on a screen may look out of place on a painted fascia beside its neighbours, and with internally lit signs resisted, people will see it in daylight and under outside light rather than glowing. We choose palettes on purpose: if you trade in the town centre, a deep red, bottle green or brown can be the main colour or a version kept ready for the sign, while the rest of the brand stays as bright as you like online.

Read next: What logo colours say to customers · A free brand colour palette guide