We always define the problems first, then create the solutions. Shopfronts, murals, signage and town centre plans.
We can help you work out a strategy for what needs the most help to make the most of budgets. Our thinking was shaped by 25 years of branding and design work, and by meeting and listening to hundreds of high street businesses.
We help any high street business, shop, café, library, area, shutter, parade, building or wall make the most of what and where it is.
High street projects across twelve London boroughs and counting.
Advisory work for the Mayor of London's Office.
25 years of brand and design experience.
Designed by us, delivered by trusted local makers and installers.
Every high street is different, but the pattern of decline is familiar. Shops that once looked proud of themselves stop trying. Signage gets cheaper and louder. Original features disappear under cladding, oversize signs, generic shop fronts, security shutters and clutter. Slowly, a place stops feeling like anywhere in particular. Our starting point is to reveal and work with what's already there to make budgets go further.
When Bromley Council asked us to look at Penge town centre, we didn't start with designs. We walked the high street, talked with shop owners, listened to shoppers and observed behaviour. This helped us learn which businesses were local heroes that drew people in from other areas, which buildings were most visible, and where limited money would make the biggest difference.
Then we gave the council something more useful than pictures: a way to decide.
Is it a well loved local shop? Is it highly visible? Does it bring people in from other areas? Does it offer good value? A one-page flow chart the council could use to explain every decision.
Every project starts with a first meeting. Ours happens on the street it's about.
Start with a short call about your town centre, your funding and what you're trying to achieve. Then we'll walk your high street together and talk through what we see: the buildings with hidden potential, the quick wins, the things we'd do first. No documents, no pitch, just ideas and honest guidance. There's no charge and no obligation, it's simply how we like to begin.
If you're further afield, we can do the same by video. Send us photographs and a map, and we'll walk it with you on screen.
Street-by-street surveys, funding criteria, estimates for costs, based on past projects, and phasing plans. We help you decide what to do before anyone designs anything.
From improving a single shopfront to designing a whole parade, we work with business owners, planners and sign makers. We can create easy to follow/enforce parade/high street ‘brand guidelines’ to ensure the parade or high street has an ongoing legacy.
We love history and work with councils and local historians to highlight local stories that help make areas unique. We work with muralists and sign makers (including enamel sign manufacturers) to ensure the designs are as good on a wall as they are in a presentation.
Turning building sites and empty units from meaningless dead zones into part of the story of the street and the wider area.
Identities and campaigns that celebrate where you are or what you have done for town centres, BID groups and councils.
We design everything ourselves and recommend trusted makers, signwriters and installers, usually contracted by you directly. It keeps costs transparent and the paperwork simple, and we stay involved through to the finished work on the street. Where architects or heritage specialists are part of a scheme, we work happily alongside them.
A shop-by-shop survey of Penge town centre with costed recommendations, funding criteria and a phasing plan, so the council could spend a limited budget where it would make the biggest difference. Not a shopfront scheme, but a plan for making a whole town centre feel proud of itself.
A series of large artworks celebrating the area's history, researched with local people and tested quietly along the way. After the work went up, residents began asking to buy the designs as posters, including one whose father had been stationed at RAF Northolt. When people want your public art on their living room wall, the place has started to mean something again.
An underpass that was dark, wet and a crime hotspot, transformed into a timeline of West Drayton's history. The kind of space people used to hurry through, now a reason to slow down.
A community mural delivered through a full commissioning process: writing the brief, running the artist tender, chairing the selection panel and involving local schools, with the Mayor of London visiting the finished work. Proof that we don't just design, we run the whole process so councils don't have to.
A mural on a much loved local landmark, designed within tight planning conditions and named exceptional by The Londonist.
An identity for a traders' group, helping independent businesses speak with one voice. High streets aren't only rebuilt by councils; it starts with the community IN MUSWELL HILL.
Most of what makes a high street feel neglected is small, visible and fixable: tired signage, dead shutters, dirty facades, handsome upper floors nobody looks after. Small, well chosen improvements, grouped together, change how a whole street feels. These pairs show what that looks like, using our proposals for Ilfracombe high street in Devon.
Whether you're a neighbourhood board shaping a Pride in Place plan, a business improvement district planning its next term, or a developer with a parade of empty units, the task is the same: turn a list of priorities into a costed, deliverable programme. That's exactly the kind of thinking we do, and we know what happens after the plan is signed off.
Most of the work since has been in London, but the thinking travels, as the Ilfracombe visuals above show. Wherever you are in the country, the offer's the same.
Tell us about your high street, your shopfront scheme or your town centre plan. A short call, then a walk down the street together, in person or on screen. Just what we'd do first.
