Johnson Banks

04/06/2026

Throwback Thursday: we have a couple of big cultural projects coming up this year so we thought it would be fun to rewind 16 years to our work for the - nice to see this again…

16/05/2026

Really nice little vignette on the insta on the poster we designed with for this year’s - link to their website in our bio

13/05/2026

There was news this week that a Beatles Museum is being planned in London’s Savile Row, scene of their last live rooftop gig. It reminded us of an old stamp project - nearly twenty years ago - where we designed the ten Beatles stamps for that you see here…

12/05/2026

Back at IWM Duxford today for a workshop

09/05/2026

We’ve had quite a few queries about quite how we developed the branding this year, so here’s a quick look… from the initial visual (slide 2) to wireframes to first structures and then lots of fiddling and messing about… could not have been done without the patience and skills of Mr

Designers and

08/05/2026

Happy bday - thanks for helping with our Dear World campaign for and inspiring a railing poster!

07/05/2026

In case you missed our new work for here’s some of core elements and then a few glimpses of the scheme out in the wild…
Design team : Michael Johnson Lettie Shen George Stockley .design and master illustrator

03/05/2026

A glimpse of a fun new project for a Bank Holiday weekend, for this year’s Brighton Festival.

Ever since our rebrand of over a decade ago, we’ve often worked on annual remixes of the branding. This year’s – the 60th edition – is a bit different. It’s the first festival for many years that hasn’t had a guest director.
So we needed a new way to sum up a unique city on the edge of the UK, but still feature the big ‘F’ which anchors the brand.

We turned the city and its festival into a crazy vintage pinball table full of uniquely Brighton architectural features – beach huts, helter-skelters, donuts, squashed ice creams and spinning pigeons. Fun to think of, immensely tricky to do...

Here’s a quick glimpse, more to come soon…

Design team: Michael Johnson Lettie Suen plus the very talented and sound from Crawford Blair. And our thanks to the team for approving such a crazy concept...

23/04/2026

16/04/2026

The highly respected My Life In Design podcast, hosted by Claire Blyth of recently spoke to JB creative director Michael Johnson, and the discussion is out today.

Here’s Claire’s intro to the chat… and follow the link in our bio to podcast page
“
This week Claire meets up with legendary designer Michael Johnson, founder of brand design consultancy Johnson Banks. He’s known for defining and designing brands that make a difference, such as UCL, Shelter, Jodrell Bank, University of Cambridge, RIBA and the UN Climate Change Conference - COP26.

Michael speaks design conferences around the world, lectures at leading institutions including Ravensbourne, Kingston University, Glasgow School of Art, ArtCenter Pasadena, NYC’s School of Visual Arts, and the University of Cambridge.

He is an award-winning author of multiple books including the ground-breaking Branding: In Five and a Half Steps. He has dozens of designs within the V&A’s permanent collection, he’s been the recipient of D&AD’s President’s Award and the winner of seven yellows and a black pencil.

In this episode, recorded live at Johnson Banks studio, Michael shares his career journey, complete with early challenges and rejections, to writing to Wally Olins (co-founder of Wolf Ollins) and a new door opening…

He talks about the evolution of his studio with it’s focus on working with brands that make a difference and the importance of aligning client work with personal and company values.

He also discusses the current focus on trends over longevity in brand design and how young designers need to focus on ideas.