Tesco plc is a British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. The company traces its name to 1924, when founder Jack Cohen combined the initials of T.E. Stockwell, his tea supplier, with the first two letters of his own surname. The Tesco visual identity has undergone several documented redesigns, most notably in 1995 and again in the early 2010s, with the current mark featuring the wordmark in blue with five blue dashes beneath it.
Design and History
Tesco’s corporate identity was last reviewed in 1987 before the company commissioned RPA Europe, its retail planning and design consultancy, to conduct an audit of all visual communication. The review took three years and found several different types of branding in use across the operation, with food packaging, shop fronts, in-store signs and promotional literature all lacking a uniform size, typeface or colour. Even the old squat Tesco logo, officially dropped in 1987, was still appearing on some food packs. Tesco decided to banish all its old logos and its secondary typeface and devise a new logo that would unite all design elements. The new identity, featuring scrolled leaves beneath the Tesco script, was introduced in 1995. RPA creative director Jon Cameron said the team developed a font designed to wed old with new, retaining the quality associations of a serif typeface with the modernity of a sans serif type. [1]
The blue bars that became a permanent element of the Tesco logo made their debut in the 1980s on Tesco press ads, devised by advertising agency Lowe Howard-Spink. The bars were so effective that over time they appeared in other areas until they became a permanent element of the logo. Discarding the bars was not an option as they had acquired too much equity, so the 1995 redesign incorporated them into the new branding. [1]
In January 1997, Tesco appointed corporate identity specialist Wolff Olins to produce a strategic identity to take it into the next millennium. Although Tesco had introduced its scrolled leaves logo in 1995, several other designs remained in use, including some from 1979. [2] By September 1997, a Tesco spokesman said the existing corporate marque was still being rolled out across all the retailer’s 575 stores and denied any identity change was planned. [3]
The current Tesco logo, dated circa 2011, is the version used on the company’s official website. [4] The mark consists of the word “TESCO” in blue lettering with five blue dashes positioned beneath the letters. [5]
Meaning and Symbolism
The five blue dashes beneath the Tesco wordmark have become a distinctive non-verbal element of the brand. In October 2024, Tesco launched an advertising campaign called “Icons” through agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) London, which replaced the letters of the logo with images of foods starting with T, E, S, C and O. Only the five blue dashes and the “Every Little Helps” strapline remained to identify the brand. [6] BBH described the campaign as making quality food stand for Tesco, with every letter crafted from real ingredients shot in extreme detail. [7]
Tesco attempted to register the blue dashes as a trade mark in the UK without the word TESCO, but the application was unsuccessful. The UK Intellectual Property Office considered that the recognisability of the dashes relied upon the word TESCO being shown alongside them, despite Tesco’s survey evidence to the contrary. [6] In 2014, the Intellectual Property Office again refused Tesco’s bid to register the blue dashed line as a trademark, ruling it was too simplistic. Hearing officer Edward Smith said although people might associate the dashes with Tesco, they were only punctuation and wholly dependent on the presence of the word Tesco. [8]
Logo Index is an independent educational archive covering logos, visual identities and graphic design history. All trademarks and brand assets remain the property of their respective owners.
