Saffron won the job of creating a new corporate identity for Visit London, the marketing arm of Europe’s largest city, in late 2006. The challenge was to find something that let London be historic and charming and also contemporary and evolving—and which avoided the clichés. The identity would support business as well as leisure tourism.
The solution was a typographic identity based around a core idea of Visit London as “champions” for London and drawn in red—a colour solidly if not uniquely associated with the city. London’s quirkiness entered in the form of “factoids”, like “It rains more in Rome” and “Est. 50AD”, which are given their own line in the wordmark when the situation calls for it.
In all versions, the identity is unpretentious and unadorned and befits London’s stature. “Marketing” magazine called the new logo “near-perfect”.
Alas, selecting one design route, however ‘near perfect’ it may be, always means leaving a number of other interesting routes on the cutting room floor. These are a few of our favourites from the vaults.
