Rebrand needed to shed decayed in Deptford tag

The dour wastelands of London’s SE14 have been good to Cog Design’s Michael Smith. We smirked into our Soho mochaccinos at the title of his consultancy retrospective, ‘A Decade in Deptford’, which sounds more like a prison sentence than a celebration.

How we laughed when we learnt his first Deptford base was a dingy, windowless fifth-floor room. Then Smith told us he could see green fields from his current vantage, an open-plan loft, now home to a 17-strong design powerhouse. What’s going on down there? Deptford could use a rebrand for us West End snobs. Millwall-themed coffee bars anyone?