Amazon’s visual identity is built around a lowercase wordmark and a curved orange arrow that doubles as a smile. The arrow runs from the letter “a” to the letter “z” beneath the wordmark, a device introduced in January 2000 to communicate that the company offers anything customers might want to buy online, from A to Z.[1]
Design and History
The current mark dates to January 2000, when Amazon.com introduced a new logo designed to better communicate customer satisfaction and its expanded selection. According to the company’s original announcement, the previous downward curve underlining “amazon.com” was replaced by a smile that begins under the “a” and ends with a dimple under the “z.”[1] The A-to-Z emphasis was intended to reflect the company’s growth beyond books into categories such as CDs, toys, electronics, videos, and home improvement products.[1]
The 2000 logo was designed by the agency Turner Duckworth, which states on its own site that it designed the Amazon logo that year.[2] Turner Duckworth co-founder Bruce Duckworth has described the brief from Jeff Bezos as straightforward: the company was hyper-focused on customer service, and the vision was to eventually sell “everything and anything.” The agency presented three design concepts, and Bezos chose the final design in the first meeting.[3]
Amazon’s earlier logos were also created by Turner Duckworth. The original emblem, used from 1995 to 1997, featured a stylised “A” with a winding river above a simple sans serif wordmark, a reference to the Amazon River.[4] After several short-lived iterations in 1997 and 1998, the company returned to Turner Duckworth to evolve the design into the smile logo that debuted in 2000.[4]
In 2025, Amazon unveiled its first update to the logo in over 20 years as part of a broader brand transformation led by design agency Koto in collaboration with Amazon’s internal design team, Amazon XCM.[5] The project spanned more than 50 sub-brands and took 18 months.[6] Koto described the update as putting greater emphasis not on the arrow but on a deeper, more emphatic smile, reflecting Amazon’s mission to delight customers.[7]
Meaning and Symbolism
The dual meaning of the curved line beneath the wordmark is well documented. Amazon’s own 2000 press release explains that the smile begins under the “a” and ends with a dimple under the “z,” emphasizing that Amazon.com offers anything, from A to Z, that customers may be looking to buy online.[1] The same curve depicts “the ultimate expression of customer satisfaction: a smile.”[1]
Turner Duckworth’s Joanne Chan has noted that the “everything from A to Z” meaning was never touted openly by Amazon, remaining a discovery element in the logo much like the arrow in the FedEx logo.[3]
Typography and Design
In the 2025 refresh, Koto redrew the original letterforms of the logo to correct typographic inconsistencies and bring greater precision. From that foundation, the studio built a complete custom alphabet called Amazon Logo Sans, providing a unified, scalable system for every sub-brand.[7] The team also expanded the shaft and point of the smile arrow and rendered it in a saturated, custom tangerine orange dubbed “Smile Orange.”[5] A second bespoke typeface, Ember Modern, was developed as a new version of the typeface Amazon originally designed for the Kindle screen, updated with characters for 366 languages and seven weights.[6]
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