John Lewis is the department store arm of the UK’s John Lewis Partnership, an employee-owned retail group that also operates the Waitrose supermarket chain. The store’s visual identity has evolved through several distinct phases, from a mid-century monogram to a long-running Gill Sans wordmark, and most recently to a pattern-based logotype developed by Pentagram.
Design and History
The John Lewis Partnership has a documented pattern-making legacy dating to the 1960s, when designer Hans Schleger (also known as Zero) created a logotype for the Partnership that entwined the letters of its acronym. Schleger worked with Peter Hatch, who designed diamond-shaped bags for the company during the same period. The V&A Archive of Art and Design holds John Lewis Partnership trademark designs by Schleger dated 1963-1966.[1][2]
In 1989, design consultancy Lloyd Northover introduced a new identity for John Lewis that linked its department stores and Waitrose supermarkets through a diagonal stripe motif. Company and store names were set in Elan capitals, a typeface designed by Albert Boton in 1985. Helvetica had been used from the 1970s into the 1990s as the principal identifying typeface.[2]
Gill Sans was introduced as the John Lewis type family in the early 2000s. Pentagram adapted the typeface to create John Lewis and Peter Jones logotypes with chamfered initial letters echoing the diagonal pattern of the identity. A bespoke version of Gill was introduced in 2001 for better legibility and flexibility, with further weights added in 2009.[2]
In September 2018, Pentagram redesigned the identities of John Lewis, Waitrose and the John Lewis Partnership. The project was led by Pentagram partner Harry Pearce, with partners Naresh Ramchandani and William Russell also credited. The redesign added “& Partners” to the John Lewis and Waitrose logotypes to foreground the employee ownership model, and introduced a new “Brandlines” logotype inspired by a Peter Hatch pattern created for the Partnership in the 1960s.[3][4]
Pentagram looked to the original John Lewis Partnership logotype designed by Hans Schleger and Peter Hatch in the early 1960s, which was centred around a pattern motif. The new identity used the same weight and thickness of lines found in the original diamond symbol pattern.[4]
More recently, Design Bridge and Partners developed a refreshed brand identity for the John Lewis Partnership itself. This identity uses a “Thread” as a visual representation of the new JLP brand, paying homage to John Lewis’s heritage in haberdashery dating back to the 1860s while symbolising the Partnership business model. The iconic 1960s monogram developed by Hans Schleger was reimagined to reflect the thread concept.[5]
Meaning and Symbolism
The 2018 Pentagram identity was created to support the strategic ambitions of the two retail brands and elevate the Partnership’s defining characteristic: its employee ownership model. The addition of “& Partners” to the logotypes enshrined the Partners into the forefront of the John Lewis and Waitrose brands.[3]
Pentagram also created “Partner Green”, a distinct accent colour exclusively dedicated to Partner activity and communication. The colour was inspired by John Spedan Lewis, the founder of the Partnership, who signed his correspondence in green ink. It was intended to be applied deliberately and sparingly, never for decoration.[3][6]
The Design Bridge and Partners identity for the John Lewis Partnership uses the Thread as a visual representation of the brand, symbolic of the Partnership business model described as “made of many Partners, stronger together”.[5]
Typography and Design
Gill Sans became synonymous with John Lewis, and Pentagram retained it in the 2018 redesign, redrawing the wordmarks to work across scales from mobile phones to billboards and retail installations. The three wordmarks were stacked to create more of a “mark”.[3][6]
Pentagram also developed a hand-drawn headline font called “brandlines alphabet”, taken from an old version of Gill and incorporating Hatch’s pattern lines. Distinctive colour palettes were used across the identities, with monochrome for John Lewis and a rich green palette for Waitrose.[3]
Harry Pearce described the decision to keep Gill Sans as natural, noting that “Gill is kind of British” and that it resonated across the John Lewis Partnership brands. He emphasised that the redesign drew on heritage as a springboard rather than copying the past.[6]
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