Lauded as the world's most beautiful bookshop, since 1906 Livraria Lello has been an important cultural and artistic landmark in the city of Porto. In 2015 it came under new ownership to take it to a new level. The building underwent an extensive renovation and, among other initiatives, there's a new space – Sala Gemma – dedicated to rare and antique books. Deeply committed to the promotion of books, their stories, their writers and literary heritage, Livraria Lello is looking ahead. The new visual identity was a key step in its ambition to be bolder, more contemporary, and ready for the next chapters in its story.
Embedded in the wood carved ceiling of the bookshop there is an 8m x 3.5m stained glass window. Its central motif is a blacksmith and the Latin phrase Decus in Labore (‘dignity in work’), which has been in use as a strapline in the bookshop's branding since its inception. This was the starting point for shaping something new while preserving elements from the previous visual identity. Gradually, through simplification, the blacksmith came into the foreground and into the middle of the words Livraria Lello. Besides that placement in the main version of the brand, the blacksmith can also stand alone, morph, or adopt different expressions. The font is Livraria Lello Logo, a variation within a more complex typographic system designed by Dino dos Santos (DSType Foundry). One of its most distinctive features is a wide set of ligatures, explored in the development of the new visual identity. The colours derive from the bookshop's unique architecture. The stained glass, the woodwork and the iconic crimson staircase provide the colour palette: for the main version of the brand we chose brown (wood) and red (staircase). The secondary colours – bright green and pink – were chosen to favour bolder contrasts in the development of brand applications.
