Waitrose is the grocery arm of the UK’s John Lewis Partnership, an employee-owned retail group. The supermarket’s visual identity has been shaped by two major agency-led redesigns in the 21st century, most recently in 2018 when Pentagram unified the Waitrose and John Lewis brands under a shared design system.
Design and History
In 2002, Waitrose launched a revamped identity created by Interbrand and JHP. JHP created the concept for the identity, which Interbrand developed, with JHP also working on retail signage. The new branding, which included a new logo, was inspired by the style of the award-winning Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine and was trialled in the Waitrose Food & Home store in Canary Wharf before rolling out nationally. The previous Waitrose identity had been created by Newell and Sorrell in 1988. [1] [2]
In September 2018, the John Lewis Partnership relaunched its two retail brands as Waitrose & Partners and John Lewis & Partners, with new brand identities designed by Pentagram. The rebrand added “& Partners” to both logotypes to highlight the Partnership’s employee ownership model, in which all employees are Partners in the business. [3] [4]
The new identity was led by Pentagram partner Harry Pearce, who had previously worked on Waitrose own-brand packaging in 1985 with Dominic Lippa. The redesign was the result of three years of design work. [5]
The new logos use capitalised text in a fine sans serif typeface inside a rectangular design that reimagines the familiar stripes of previous logos. The logo shape can also be used without text. While John Lewis uses a mostly black colour scheme, Waitrose continues to use green. [6]
Meaning and Symbolism
The new “Brandlines” logotype is inspired by a pattern created by Peter Hatch for the John Lewis Partnership in the 1960s. It is based on precise proportional relationships derived from the original pattern and constantly reiterates its form across the brand. The pattern draws on the Partnership’s distinguished pattern-making legacy, which extends from founder John Spedan Lewis’s beginnings as a haberdasher to the Hans Schleger and Peter Hatch identity era of the 60s and 70s. [3]
Pentagram also created “Partner Green”, a distinct accent colour exclusively dedicated to Partner activity and communication. The colour takes inspiration from the green ink that founder John Spedan Lewis famously used to sign his correspondence. It is applied deliberately and sparingly across the three identities, never for decoration, as a tribute to the Partnership’s employees. [3] [5]
Typography and Design
Pentagram retained the Gill font that had become synonymous with John Lewis and applied it across all identities, creating more of a “mark” by stacking the wordmark. The three wordmarks were redrawn to thrive at various scales, from mobile phones to billboards and retail installations. [3]
A hand-drawn headline font called “brandlines alphabet” was taken from an old version of Gill and incorporates Hatch’s pattern lines. [3]
Following the 2018 rebrand, Pentagram was commissioned to reassess every Waitrose & Partners own-brand product. The Waitrose & Partners No.1 and Waitrose & Partners marks are both set in Gill and, when stacked, are separated by a short horizontal line which works like an underline, emphasising the premium quality of the range. [7]
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