Prezzo. Did you know they do Italian?
Well you do now!
The Prezzo brand, famously mispronounced by the great unwashed across the nation, has undergone a rebrand. Prezzo is now… drumroll…
Prezzo Italian.
Well that’s revelation. Prezzo. Pizza. I wouldn’t have guessed.
But just in case you had any doubts as to what the brand that’s been on British high streets for 25 years is all about, they’ve added the word “Italian” to their visual and written ephemera.
As a fan and subscriber to their email notifications, I was aware that they would be undergoing an unveiling on the 1st May 2025, and judging by other recent rebranding unveils, I was really not sure what was going to happen.
Many years ago The Post Office rebranded as Consignia and then rapidly returned to the old familiar name within a year.
Yellow Pages was a well -known paper directory that I remember once delivering carloads off around Fleet in Hampshire. When it went digital, it became Yell, and then, in a Gerald Ratner moment, was rebranded as “hibu” which its CEO at the same said “It doesn’t mean anything” or words to that effect. Meaningless by name and meaningless by nature, hibu reverted back to being Yell.
And as for the legendary British car maker, famed for it’s E-Type and MkII variants, beloved in our popular culture, well, allI could say at the time was OMG Jaguar, what have you done?!
Now, it’s the Prezzo rebrand.
The Old Prezzo Logo
What did I think of the old Prezzo?
Well, it was quite sleek and classy with its white-on-black sans-serif font. almost art deco period. Now that I’m analysing it, the PR in PREZZO was quite compact and narrow, almost as if they were emphasising the EZZO, which is linguistically correct. The R also looks like it may have been trying to signify a chair? Or P for a Person at a table?
The New Prezzo Logo
Now?
The new logo is white on blue, a cornflower blue shade of sky blue apparently (The RGB value of 59 130 246 is a bright, cool blue with a relatively high blue saturation. The hex code for this colour is #3b82f6) with a chunkier, more solid sans serif font – bold, and strong. Less classy, more homely. The letters all have a similar character width, It even has a surround, a boilerplate I suppose, a simple white on blue detail – its old-school again. And then of course, we have the very clear underscoring that PREZZO is ITALIAN in a more slight font-weight.
It’s more PRET than GATSBY now.
As for the supporting font face on their website…
…t’s a bit 1970s retro, a soft, fun, friendly, serif font, that I could soon get tired of reading (I do like the legibility/readability of fonts which was highlighted during my time getting a distinction in typography on my graphics & design qualification back in ’97)
New Prezzo Italian Storefront?
Oh yes, I was wondering how quickly we’d see the rebrand hit the British high street. There’s a Prezzo here in Farnborough, Hampshire, in the Kingsmead shopping centre, installed to support the Vue Cinema crowd if they want to eat before or after a show. There was one in Fleet, but it’s now called Bella Capri, and I thought there was one in Camberley or Farnham in Surrey, but it appears not. The nearest appear to be in Godalming, Surrey, and Reading, Berkshire.
But I digress…
There is a new “demonstrator” shopfront in Kensington, London.
“Say ciao to Prezzo Italian Kensington, our first ever new-look restaurant and the beginning of a bold brand and new chapter for Prezzo Italian.”
…as they say on the company webpage.
And, as the heading accompanying the London restaurant’s new image says… “classics”.
So, this is a classic rebrand. It’s quite safe, and the blue stands out more than the black & white. Prezzo did go into liquidation a few years back, so to outlast Jamie’s Italian is quite a feat.
That secondary fat font I can see to be tiring already, so how long that lasts remains to be seen.
Anyway, it’s not a mess like the EVRI rebrand was and it’s not upending a century of tradition like the new Jaguar fashion brand has done. Safe. Yes. Boring? Maybe.
Enjoyed your review of the New Prezzo rebrand but your only mention of the colour used is a ‘Cornflower Blue’ but surely they have changed because the Blue was (and still is) the official colour of the Royal House of Savoy and this is still the colour of the monarchy today – also why the football team wear that colour as well.
I revisited the post, Danny, and the new PREZZO Italian web logo’s RGB value is related to sky blue apparently. I’ve got a HEX for it but not a Pantone.