A quiet revolution is happening in British design. It is being driven by a generation of designers who refuse to leave their roots at the door.

Being creative and growing up in two visual cultures can be challenging, but you learn to appreciate multiple interpretations of design. You learn early that design does not have a single language for instance colour carries different weight depending on who is looking, typography that reminds us of a specific memory and can contain meaning, and the visual identity of a brand is never just about how something looks, but about who it speaks to and what it makes them feel.

That understanding, hard-won and deeply personal, is exactly what a growing number of Asian designers based in the United Kingdom are bringing to their work. And the results are beginning to reshape what British brand identity design looks like, sounds like, and is capable of achieving.

Sthuthi Ramesh — London

If you have visited Manchester Museum recently, you may have noticed something quietly remarkable about the typography in the South Asia Gallery, the UK's first permanent gallery dedicated to the South Asian diaspora. The typeface feels simultaneously ancient and fresh, rooted in tradition but entirely contemporary. It did not happen by accident.

The museum credit for this remarkable identity goes to a London-based designer, Sthuthi Ramesh, who teamed up with Universal Thirst. The duo devised a South Asian diaspora journey-inspired typeface that contains multiple languages. Ramesh employed some design archaeology and ingeniously created something original out of a 1930s Gujarati type foundry modular type specimen.

Sthuthi has worked at some of London's most respected studios, including Pentagram and Wieden+Kennedy, before establishing her own independent practice a move motivated in part by becoming a mother and the desire to build something on her own terms. Her studio now works across corporate identity, typography, editorial design and art direction, with clients ranging from the Design Museum to Cambridge University Press to the NHS.

"Being born and raised in India and then later moving to the UK has given me a super creative lens, making my design solutions fresh and relevant," she says.

You can explore her portfolio at sthuthiramesh.com

Manjit Thapp — UK

Some designers work primarily in the world of corporate identity. Manjit Thapp works in a world of her own making, and major brands keep coming to find her there.

Illustrator Manjit Thapp works in the UK. She uses both traditional and digital mediums to create art that is layered and rich and has collaborated with Adobe, Apple, Cartoon Network and Harper's Bazaar. Thapp also had a solo exhibition in 2021 called “My Head is a Jungle” at NOW Gallery in London. This is an important first step for any artist to gain recognition from an institution, especially when most of her supporters are online and appreciate her unique visual world with layers and textures, calm muted autumnal hues, female characters and an emotional depth that is both culturally specific yet highly relatable.

Thapp partnered with Dishoom, a restaurant group that has become a well-known brand in hospitality in the UK, to design a collection of t-shirts showcasing inspirational Indian women, and, in doing so, brought her signature visual identity to an existing brand that is confident throughout the dining experience. When Dishoom wanted to say something specific and meaningful about South Asian heritage, they turned to a South Asian designer who could say it from the inside.

Explore her work at manjitthapp.co.uk

Umer Shehbaz — Manchester

Not all the most substantial contributions by Asian designers in the UK will become known through institutional appointments or magazine articles. Much of the work can be found on the streets of Manchester, on walls of restaurants, on the roofs of cars making their way through Levenshulme and Gorton and Didsbury on a grey Tuesday morning.

Based in Manchester, Umer Shehbaz is a Senior Graphic Designer and Brand Identity Specialist with twelve years of international experience. He focuses on practical, hard-working design, building brand identities that remain sharp, legible, and effective across physical print, outdoor media, and digital platforms.

The recent projects Umer has undertaken point to the extent one designer can go. Some of Umer's projects include an entire graphic identity system for the Amazonia Lounge and Bar (one of the larger hospitality structures in Manchester) consisting of logo, interior graphic and neon, window graphic, menus, uniform, and web. Umer was tasked with merging the Afro fusion style, which is known for its vibrancy, and frankly, is difficult to tame, with the restraint of luxury. The design to which Umer has been able to successfully achieve this brief is evident today with the opening of Amazonia.

Earlier in 2024, he delivered a complete rebrand for Rolled Alloys Inc. , a global specialty alloys supplier based in Michigan, USA, founded in 1953, serving aerospace, space exploration, oil and gas and medical industries across more than 130 countries with revenues approaching $300 million. That commission was conducted entirely remotely, from Manchester to Michigan, and it is the kind of work that quietly demolishes the idea that serious international design briefs require a London postcode or a Western pedigree.

Before his UK career, Shehbaz spent four years as lead designer for Rotaract International District 3271 in Pakistan, one of the largest youth civic organizations in the world, operating under the formal framework of Rotary International. His work included the annual 350-page District Directory, a formal Rotary International publication, and complete event branding for district conferences attended by hundreds of delegates. It was unglamorous, deadline-driven, institutionally significant work, exactly the kind of practice that builds the professional backbone that later makes the difficult commissions possible.

In 2023 he designed a 92-page teaching manual for Wiz Driving School in Manchester, a document produced to the precise illustration conventions required by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the UK's regulatory body for driving instruction. It required him to learn, from the inside, how a driving instructor sees the world. The manual is now in active use across a fleet of more than 60 instructors serving students across the city.

View his portfolio at umershehbaz.com and behance.net/umer82059f71

The Larger Pattern

There is no similar style or clear common purpose that defines these designers. They work differently and for multiple clients. There is something more important than that. There is a different way of seeing and understanding the world. They are more organized in their thinking to social and commercial services.

Sthuthi Ramesh has said she has been one of the only or the only designer of color in most of the studios she has even worked in. This has influenced her to look outside of white and European modern design and draw inspiration from there. This results in design solutions that are not the results of a white and western modern design education. This is not because it is culturally decorative or exotic, but actually because it is built on more layers of visual reality.

This breadth is becoming, for British brands that are seeking design partners who can understand and adapt to multi-layered complexity (cultural, social, commercial, institutional, international), not a bonus, but the competitive edge.

The designers featured in articles all contributed their work to the ever impressive design culture that Britain has, but these designers also made their own contributions and have their own way of looking at things and made their own design culture.

That is what a creative contribution looks like. And it is only beginning.