Travis Perkins plc is a British builders’ merchant and home improvement retailer headquartered in Northampton, and the UK’s largest distributor of building materials to trade customers.[1] The company’s corporate identity is built around a typographic wordmark, with the official media centre offering primary and secondary logo versions for use on white and darker backgrounds respectively.[2]
Design and History
The Travis Perkins logo has its roots in the 1988 merger that formed the company, when Travis and Arnold combined with Sandell Perkins. Margaret Hill-Tout, a graphic designer at the branding agency Cooper Clark and New at the time, was commissioned to lead the development of a new corporate identity for the newly formed company.[3]
Hill-Tout’s design drew directly from the visual identities of the two merging entities. She took inspiration from Travis Arnold’s colours, which were black and yellow, and the Sandell Perkins colours, which were green and black, and incorporated the ‘T’ from Travis Arnold and the ‘P’ from Sandell Perkins into the logo design.[3] The resulting logo endured for over 30 years, and in January 2020 Travis Perkins welcomed Hill-Tout to its Northampton branch to commemorate her key contribution to the design.[3]
Travis Perkins plc now uses a different logo from the one Hill-Tout designed, though the earlier mark remained in use for over three decades.[3] The current corporate identity is documented in the company’s official media centre, which describes the logo as “the foundation of our brand identity” and provides specific usage guidelines.[2]
Meaning and Symbolism
The official media centre identifies the current logo’s main colour as “BRAND MARK – 7751”, a reference to Pantone 7751, a yellow-green shade.[2] The primary logo version combines black with this main colour and is specified for use on white backgrounds only, while a secondary version uses white with the main colour on a gradient grey or black background.[2]
For the earlier logo, the colour palette carried direct historical meaning: black and yellow came from Travis Arnold, while green and black came from Sandell Perkins, visually representing the two equally strong entities coming together in the 1988 merger.[3]
Typography and Design
The Travis Perkins identity is typographic, centring on the brand name as a wordmark. The official media centre describes the logo as the foundation of the brand identity and stresses the importance of presenting it correctly and consistently across applications.[2] The company provides both primary and secondary logo versions to ensure legibility across different background conditions, with the secondary version reserved for darker backgrounds where the primary logo is not visible.[2]
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