Logo design for London businesses

Standing out where every good name is taken

London has more businesses than any other UK region: 538,000 VAT and/or PAYE-registered businesses in March 2025, 19.7% of the UK total in the ONS count. A lot of them share a trade word, a borough and a handful of initials. When names collide, the logo has to do the separating. A customer who saw your van on Tuesday should recognise your mark on a search result on Friday, even if they have forgotten the exact name.

That is why we draw an icon you can own rather than a picture of what you do. A spanner or a house outline tells nobody which plumber or builder you are. A shape built from your initial, or from one detail of the work, gives the customer something to remember that the firm across the road does not have.

Before you order, search your name on the Companies House register and the UK IPO trade mark search. We draw every logo from scratch, but we are designers, not trade mark lawyers, and a clash is cheaper to find before the artwork exists.

Read next: Check whether a business name is free · Logo copyright and trade marks in the UK

Leave Tower Bridge out of it

Tower Bridge, skylines, red buses, Big Ben and the Shard are the London logo clichés, and they all have the same problem: they say London, not you. Every one of them is already on a great many other logos, and fine skyline detail turns into a grey smudge at the size of a profile picture.

The roundel is the one to avoid outright. TfL describes the circle and bar shape of its logos as a registered trade mark, and a circle crossed by a bar reads as the Underground before it reads as your business. If the city matters to your brand, put it in the descriptor line under the name, where it can change when you grow beyond the M25.

A sign that works on a protected street

Many London high streets sit in conservation areas, and the sign over your door is judged against the street around it. Westminster's own planning guidance (its Public Realm Guidance SPD, August 2025) is a useful example: shop signs at fascia level, externally illuminated, with internally illuminated box fascias and projecting signs not normally appropriate in conservation areas. Other boroughs set their own rules, and an illuminated sign may need advertisement consent from the council, so check yours before you order a sign.

So a London shopfront logo has to work as painted lettering or individually cut letters on a fascia, in one colour, lit from outside. Cut letters can also be halo-lit, which is our suggestion rather than Westminster's wording. Every logo we deliver includes a single-colour version and vector files your signmaker can cut from directly, which is exactly what that kind of sign needs. Applying for consent stays with you and your signmaker; the artwork will be ready for it.

Read next: Shopfront signage design · What vehicle signage costs

Work we have done in London

We designed and built the website for Above Scaffolding, a family-owned scaffolding contractor with a Pimlico, London address, working across London, Kent and Essex. It is written up in our portfolio, with what we were asked for and what we made.

• Above Scaffolding website