Pentagram crafts new identity for The Conran Shop to aid its global expansion

Founded in 1973, The Conran Shop is a world-renowned retailer known for its iconic furniture, lighting and home accessories designs, and boasts stores across London, Paris, Japan and South Korea. To celebrate half a century in business, the company recently turned to Sascha Lobe and Kimberly Lloyd at Pentagram to craft a new visual identity for the brand.

The new identity features a brand architecture logo system and a bespoke typeface family, encapsulating a spirit of modernity and sophistication while paying homage to the visionary spirit of the brand's founder, Sir Terence Orby Conran, who died in 2020.

Visual ambassadors

As The Conran Shop continues to expand in existing and new territories, including Japan, Korea, Asia and the Middle East, the new brand architecture needed to accommodate the unique characteristics in each market whilst staying true to The Conran Shop's overarching identity.

To capture the spirit of these regions and forge a connection between their vibrant cultures and the brand, each logo marque was designed to serve as a visual ambassador in its respective territory.

The new brand architecture is a dynamic system that revolves around a contraction based on the line 'The Conran Shop', serving as its spine while providing a foundation for expansion, akin to a well-crafted architecture.

This thoughtful and versatile system reflects the brand's commitment to harmonising tradition and innovation, allowing the store to flourish and evolve in diverse global markets.

The new custom font, meanwhile, was crafted by Sascha Lobe with a clear goal in mind: to reflect the care and attention to detail, Conran was known for, representing the history of the brand whilst capturing its future.

International inspiration

"Sir Terence Conran and his legacy have been the biggest source of inspiration for us," says Sascha, who came to Pentagram London from Germany in 2018.

"Many years ago, whenever we visited London as tourists, the Conran Shop was a must-visit stop," he recalls. "Then later, during the Bauhaus centennial in 2019, our personal experience of meeting Sir Conran and seeing his relentless passion for design up-close was truly invigorating."

"For this project, we had a genuine conversation on his legacy – how he sought for the new, how he curated and selected," Sascha continues. "For us, it was clear that the new brand identity should reflect this notion. We started working on a bespoke typeface to find the most suitable set of letters which then developed into a typeface family, The Conran Shop Legacy Typeface Collection, and all assets evolved from there."

Kimberly Lloyd adds: "The Conran Shop is undoubtedly the authority in design and modernism, and unequivocally, this has been the case since 1970. Our extensive work on the visual identity for The Conran Shop incorporates not only the typeface but also its entire visual language.

"We focused on a logo system rooted in a multi-level typeface family to create a visual identity that would elevate the brand to new heights. The result is an open, diverse, and versatile identity with a sense of trustworthiness and a universal language suited for all markets."

The global rebrand will be rolled out in all of The Conran Shop's operating markets, including the UK, Japan, Korea and France, and the Middle East, where the first ever Conran Shop will open this autumn. The new London flagship in Sloane Square, which opens in September, in time for the London Design Festival, will also have new branding.