Who we are

Lydia Thornley Design is a thinking clients’ design practice. We design brands and communications across a range of media. We consult on the structure, cohesion and usability of brands. We design our own books and products. And we speak about design practice and process.

Lydia Thornley graduated from Canterbury College of Art (now UCA) in 1981 with a 1st class BA(Hons) in graphic design and an RSA Bursary. Lydia worked at leading London design companies including Pentagram and Lewis Moberly before setting up her own practice in 1991. Since then, Lydia has acquired additional technical, creative and workshop skills, expanded the practice’s output to include knowledge-based work and our own projects and become an experienced speaker.

Associates are senior in their fields, with similar interests, approaches and client profiles. They include PRs, art directors, writers, management consultants, web teams, communications specialists, workshop facilitators and event organisers.

The practice is based in the creative and tech hub of Shoreditch, East London.

We care about process and results as much as we do about the quality of our ideas. Many of our projects have critical deadlines and many are for clients who need to make every piece of communication count. So we work with clients on the project as a whole and we’re never afraid to challenge the brief if a different approach might solve a problem more effectively.

We like working with clients who, like us, have hungry minds. Our clients have included physicists, a mathematician, two architects, Polar explorers, a major London gallery, a TV chef, several Government bodies, numerous charities and NGOs, a worldwide network of international schools, two music organisations and one of the 100 most influential people in the history of the web.

If you’d like to talk to us about your project, do get in touch.