# John Lewis & Partners new logo (2018)

> John Lewis & Partners launched a new logo in Sep 2018, designed by Pentagram. Sep 2018: green John Lewis wordmark replaced by stacked John Lewis & Partners (Pentagram, Harry Pearce).

## Key facts

- Brand: John Lewis & Partners
- Launched: Sep 2018
- Studio: Pentagram
- What changed: Sep 2018: green John Lewis wordmark replaced by stacked John Lewis & Partners (Pentagram, Harry Pearce).
- Why: John Lewis went monochrome because a green logo did not fit everything it sells.
- Industry: Retail
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/john-lewis-2018/before.svg (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/john-lewis-2018/after.svg (after)

## The rebrand, explained

The John Lewis Partnership has been employee-owned since John Spedan Lewis put the business in trust in the late 1920s: all 85,000 staff are partners with a say in the business and a share of profits. Yet in 2018 neither John Lewis nor Waitrose said so on the sign. The new identity, the first major change in 18 years, arrived in a hard year for the high street, days after Debenhams' own rebrand and with the Partnership warning that half-year profits would be close to zero. Harry Pearce said the project had started three years earlier, so it was not a reaction to the slump.

Pearce set three aims: put the employee ownership up front, create what he called a bloodline between the three brands, and build a system flexible enough for fashion, electricals, a deli counter and a can of beans. The names became John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners, a purely typographic identity in widely spaced Gill Sans that can break over different numbers of lines, bold on a lorry or quiet on a scarf label.

The graphic device is a set of lines drawn from a 1960s diamond pattern by Peter Hatch, from the Hans Schleger era, and rooted in the company's haberdashery past; a hand-drawn headline alphabet built from an old Gill incorporates them. Colour was split deliberately. John Lewis went monochrome, because a green logo did not fit everything it sells. Waitrose got a richer range of five greens. And Partner Green, after the green ink Spedan Lewis signed documents in, was reserved as a small highlight, on staff name badges for example, a tiny gem for the partners only.

Design Week readers were lukewarm: one found it clear and crisp but lacking panache, others groaned at Gill Sans and eighties letter-spacing.

The criticism of the typeface misses the point. Gill Sans was already John Lewis, and the work's real achievement is structural: it makes ownership the brand, and puts the founder's green in the hands of the staff rather than on the shopfront. That is a rare example of an identity decision carrying genuine meaning.

In short: A quiet typographic system whose best idea was giving the green to the staff.

## Sources

- https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/3-september-9-september-2018/pentagrams-harry-pearce-rebrands-john-lewis-and-waitrose/
- https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/john-lewis-waitrose-unveil-modern-progressive-new-brand-identity/1491742
- https://www.pentagram.com/work/the-john-lewis-partnership

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "John Lewis & Partners new logo (2018)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/john-lewis-2018/, last updated 2026-10-20.