Brand & Style Guide
Our logos, the bolt icon, colours, typography and the way we write. Use this page whenever you put The London News in front of readers, partners or advertisers.
Assets
Logos & icons
Every mark has a short name. Use these names when asking for a change so we both know which one we mean - for example "make Logo 1 bigger" or "use the Bolt Mark here".
Bolt Mark
The yellow tile with the black bolt is our shorthand mark in the site header, footer and buttons. Keep the rounded tile; never place the bolt on its own in a different colour.
Block Wordmark - Montserrat, for navigation and products.
Signature Wordmark - Playfair italic, for editorial and footer use.
Name reference
Rules
Using the logo
Do
- Leave clear space around the logo equal to the height of the bolt tile.
- Use the full colour logo on black, white or a plain photo area.
- Keep the icon at 32px or larger so the skyline stays readable.
- Use the yellow only as an accent, never as a full page background.
Don't
- Recolour, outline, rotate or add shadows to the logo.
- Stretch, squash or re-space the wordmark.
- Place the logo on a busy photo without a dark overlay.
- Rebuild the wordmark in another typeface.
Colour
Colour palette
London Yellow
#FFCC00
Primary accent, buttons, highlights
Ink Black
#0A0A0A
Headlines, header, footer, icon artwork
Paper White
#FFFFFF
Backgrounds and text on black
Gold Deep
#B98A0B
Yellow text on light backgrounds
Muted Grey
#F5F4F1
Cards, panels, section fills
Slate Text
#383838
Body copy and captions
Yellow on white is hard to read, so yellow text on light backgrounds uses the deeper gold. On black, full yellow is correct.
Type
Typography
Playfair Display - headlines
London stories, written by Londoners
Used for page and article headlines. Bold and black weights only.
Montserrat - interface & labels
Trending Now
Buttons, navigation, section labels, captions and forms.
Body copy
Article text runs at a comfortable reading size with generous line height, in near-black on white. Keep paragraphs short: three or four lines on mobile.
Words
Voice & writing style
How we sound
- Plain British English, spelled the British way.
- Clear before clever: say the thing, then explain it.
- Confident, never shouty. No clickbait, no all-caps headlines.
- Local first - name the street, the borough, the station.
Naming
- Write The London News in full, with a capital T.
- "TLN" only in legal documents and internal references.
- The site is thelondon.news, lower case.
- Sections are Trending, Traffic, Tech, Business and so on - never "channels".
Headline style
Yes
"Northern line closures hit Camden commuters this weekend"
No
"You WON'T BELIEVE what's happening on the Tube!!!"
Need something else?
For press packs, partner artwork or a bespoke logo size, email hello@thelondon.news.