AO World, the Bolton-based online electricals retailer, uses a logo built around the letters “a” and “o” arranged to form a smiling face. The mark is rendered in a distinctive green that the company has used for years, and it was most recently refined in a 2020 brand refresh by the London, New York and Sydney-based agency DesignStudio.
Design and History
The business was founded in 2000 by John Roberts after a £1 bet that he could sell appliances online, and it originally traded as Appliances Online. In 2012, Appliances Online became ao.com, and a new advertising campaign in May 2013 marked the rebranding of the business from Appliances Online to ao.com.[1][2]
In September 2020, DesignStudio delivered a refresh of AO’s identity, updating its logo, colour palette and communication across brand touchpoints. The agency described the previous identity as “merely functional,” with several styles and messages floating around, and advertising that felt quite different from the website. DesignStudio set out to bring more consistency across everything “from the online experience to delivery and installation, all the way through to recycling.”[3]
As part of the refresh, DesignStudio redrew the smiling face logo. According to creative director Campbell Butler, the previous smile was “too chunky,” the elements were “uncomfortably spaced,” and there was a disconnect between the bubble ends of the “a” and the rounded ends of the mouth. The new logo was made clearer, with better spacing and curvatures, and optimised for digital environments, small sizes and motion.[3]
Meaning and Symbolism
The smile is central to AO’s brand. The company states that customer happiness is at the heart of everything it does, and that its logo is “always smiling.”[4] The 2020 refresh was underpinned by a concept DesignStudio called “Always On,” which reflected the “full-of-beans spirit” the agency experienced during its immersion phase of the project.[3]
DesignStudio kept AO’s well-known green but made it more vibrant, a shade intended to stand out compared with the brand’s competitors.[3] The company itself refers to its “big green smile” in describing its sponsorship presence.[5]
Typography and Design
A major part of the 2020 rebrand was the creation of a custom typeface called Smiley Face, made in collaboration with Rick Banks from F37. The typeface is full of “friendly” ligatures and glyphs, and provides full functionality in digital environments through its body weights. For the headline weight, DesignStudio matched the rounded characteristics and geometry of the logo, and developed special ligatures that “smile” towards each other. Each headline character also has a variety of alternates, providing flexibility for expression or formality depending on the context.[3]
DesignStudio also broke the smile down into multiple pieces to create a suite of graphic elements, from patterns to icons to 3D objects, which were used for brand patterns and product category graphics. The agency additionally created a sonic signature for AO, using sounds from the home set to the beat of AO’s jingle.[3]
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