Will Noble

All 32 London Borough Logos: Bitchily Critiqued

"You're listening to Barking and Dagenham FM, playing all the hits of the 80s, 90s and today. Coming up next, Shania Twain."

Spell it out, why don't you, Barnet.

A lot of thought — and no fewer than 12 legs — have gone into this design. Take the red stags, from the arms of Lord Eardley of Belvedere House. The red saltire is a nod to the Diocese of Rochester (which the borough is part of — bloody Rochester, nicking our boroughs). The font is authoritative but soft around the edges. In short: we want to move to Bexley.

Co-op meets rainbow bagels meets the 1970s, in this 2012 rebrand, They only spent £2k on this logo, and the Churchillesque platitude 'forward together' was dropped too. Brent is cool.

We'll let you know about this one when they've finished painting it.

Whenever we've passed one of these, we've subconsciously thought of recycling. It probably doesn't help that it's often found on the side of bins. Of course (?) that symbol actually represents hands joining together. Lego hands.

The Apprentice team had run out of time on Lord Sugar's task for them to rebrand Croydon. "Just make it purple," said the project manager, "we need to get back to the boardroom."

Welcome to Ealing, where the broccoli is juicy and plentiful.

Croeso i cymru... sorry, we mean 'welcome to Enfield'. Boyo. But wait — this is no dragon; the 'enfield' is a mythical creature, with a fox's head, eagle's talons, lion's body and wolf's hindquarters. You'll also spot this beast dribbling a football, on the Enfield FC crest.

Understated and classy. Although we are slightly worried we've breached the logo's strict guidelines [pdf]. Please don't beat us up, Greenwich.

We're franky undecided. Nike clearly wasn't; in 2006 the sports behemoth handed Hackney Council £300,000 in and out of court settlement, for stealing the logo.

You'll find it between C&A and M&S.

One of us in the office thinks this has got Saul Bass sass.

There's a hint of neon sign about this one. Not to mention a hint of the W doing something wholly inappropriate to the C.

This was so nearly perfect. Then, on the final flourish of the G, the ink ran out.

We hope your stay at Hillingdon is a pleasant one, and that you enjoy the complimentary chocolate left on your pillow.

There's a dog (Talbot hound) with a giant golden horn, for goodness sake. The griffins, meanwhile, represent the Borough of Brentford and Chiswick (dissolved in 1965). One of them appears on the Fuller's crest. Which one?, you ask. The more pissed of the two, we answer.

These are getting a bit samey now, aren't they?

Well at least there's a bit of blue in this one. Boar, meet winged bull, Winged bull, boar. The blue boar is in fact the symbol of the De Vere family, who lorded over the manor of Kensington for 500 years (well, posh people do live longer). The winged bull is some cheeky product placement from a well-known energy drink. Not really.

OK can we stop with coats of arms already?

Thanks. Does anyone suddenly miss coats of arms?

Lewisham: king of Clipart. The figures on the crown say "give us a shiny hug". The rest of the logo clearly says Lewisham. The crown is actually a Saxon crown, sported by two lions in Lewisham's official blazon. In the logo above, the background is 'Lewisham blue', while the font is in 'Lewisham white'.

The colours may say 1990s leisure centre, but the waterwheel is a canny reference to those which can still be found dotted along the River Wandle.

Councillor, you are spoiling us.

Know what? Although this combo of nail bar pink text and scanning a horse chestnut leaf goes against usual logo etiquette, it's worked out rather favourably, don't you think?

Excellent use of caps and italics on Word, here, Richmond. Tomorrow's lesson: how to use the internet.

This is not the most up to date version of Southwark's logo. They spent over £15,000 on getting rid of the dot. Have they not heard of Tippex?

Little Timmy was overwhelmed when he won the competition to design a new logo. Sutton does have an apple-growing heritage though; there's even a Sutton pie.

Like the Tower of London itself, this logo is solid — like it could be around for over 1,000 years. OK the artist has clearly never been to the Tower of London, but you don't want to hurt their feelings, do you...

If any borough deserves to have a tree on their logo, it's one with 'forest' in its name. Nicely done guys.

The Battersea Power Station silhouette, we like. The green and blue, we don't.

Meh. It looks like the shield...drawing...person did a preliminary sketch, and Westminster decided to just go with that. We expected more from such a prominent borough.