Amazon drops word mark in new app icon, fully embracing the smile logo

Amazon has started to roll out a new app icon that, for the first time, drops the word mark altogether and embraces its smile arrow logo as the solo visual signifier of its brand. The clunky shopping trolley is also gone (because presumably there’s no one left on planet Earth who needs telling that it’s a shop) leaving plenty of room in the little rounded square to make the logo stand alone, larger and more noticeable on a home screen. The savvy addition of a patch of blue tape at the top makes the icon akin to the universally recognisable Amazon delivery box, a sight vastly more prevalent while real-life shops have been closed in the pandemic.

The Amazon logo has seen a few iterations since founding in 1994, and since 2000 all courtesy of Turner Duckworth (which in 2019 also led the McDonald’s rebrand). Amazon adopted a downward curved orange line underneath “amazon.com” in the late 90s, then in 2000 this flipped to become an arrow joining the ‘a’ and ‘z’, and a subtle smile. This smiling arrow icon was to be used prominently on packaging to market the brand and “deliver smiles to doors,” a device that has become increasingly focused on in advertising lately. A number of campaigns since 2017 have seen the smiles come to life and sing songs such as Michael Jackson’s Can You Feel It and Solomon Burke’s Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.

While the brand continues to draw criticism, distrust and lawsuits over its practices and policies, founder Jeff Bezos is reported to have seen his fortune grow by $78 billion during the pandemic. So perhaps the focus on the smile serves to grin and bear the critics, or maybe it’s reflective of Bezos’ current sentiment. Either way, this move shows intention to simplify the brand identity closer towards a sole focus on the smiling arrow as its symbol – Amazon’s own version of the Nike Swoosh.