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Mayor Boris Johnson has ordered a new image and logo for the capital.
A global marketing campaign will celebrate London's diversity, from education to film and fashion.
But advertising agencies will be under instructions to play down the role of the City's bankers, tainted by the recession. Some £2million will be spent on the initiative.
City Hall wants to emulate the global recognition of New York's simple but effective "NYC" logo. Advertising agencies will receive an outline brief next week.
Londoners will be encouraged to submit ideas and may get the chance to vote for their favourite designs. City Hall director of marketing, Dan Ritterband, who is heading the campaign, said: "A strong brand identity is crucial to London and we are looking at ways of creating a more recognisable logo and slogan."
City Hall-sponsored events such as Trafalgar Square concerts and the New Year's Eve party will take on the updated look, which will also feature on merchandise.
The brand will be unveiled in February, at the start of a campaign timed to exploit the 2012 Olympics. Roadshows will visit the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the Youth Olympics in Singapore, Delhi's Commonwealth Games and the World Expo in Shanghai.
"At the Olympics, the sport will look after itself but our challenge is to boost business on the back of it and a new brand is crucial to that," Mr Ritterband said.
Reader views (10)
One big problem with this notion is that London really cannot be summed up in a single 'identity' - it's made up of a number of 'villages', each with a distinct identity of its own... If New York is 'the big apple', London is a 'fruit salad'... Brilliant. Will that do? Can I have the £2million?
- Nakki, London
A quite 'splendid' idea... this country's design consultancies should immediately divert all their already over-stretched, redundancy-hit resources into pitching to be involved in this completely pointless exercise in wasting public money, which would be better spent on almost anything... or just flush the money down the toilet (same effect).
- Nakki, London
£2 million! I voted Boris in to stop these "livingstone-esq" big spending on nonesense! The London embassies are still here, the tube is even more knackered ( with no hope in sight for funding air conditioning the trains due to the cancelling of the CO2 charge and the western extension), we have a "tree outside my hpouse please" hotline and now he's spending £2million just because the current branding was thought of by Ken's lot. More nonsense from Boris!
- Nathan, Barnet
We are talking £2m why should we spend that amount of money when the country is in such economic crisis? Crazy!!!!!!!!
- Rm, London
I'm with David on this. I think this is a splendid idea, and one that will put London on the map. However, £2M is not enough, and I would willingly pay much much more in council and income taxes to support this project's expansion. Projecting the 2012 logo onto the moon would be a start.
- C.Nichol, Some skint Tory-loving meejah agency, Clerkenwell
Perhaps Ritterband could spend our money more wisely, rather than wasting it on advertising...
I'd rather see the Mayor extend the bakerloo line down to lewisham via the old kent road/ new cross etc..
- Mike, london
David, are you off your head? £2m down the drain? London needs no further branding since it is a world class city. Enough said.
- Aj, London, UK
I hope they get rid of that daft LondON typography.
- John Punshon, Milton Keynes, England
I always assumed Boris was a cautious person when it came to spending public funds-obviously not-what an extravagant waste of money-someone has hit the jackpot.
- Harvey Lawrence, London
This is an absolutely outstanding idea from our Mayor who really does care about our future. The logo hopefully will incorporate what makes London special and I hope that Boris gets to put his ideas forward as well. Excellent work.
- David, Wesminster
