The Amazon logo is one of the most recognisable symbols in the world today, but its journey began with humble, experimental designs long before the iconic smile existed. Over three decades, the logo has transformed alongside the company: from online bookstore to global tech giant. Here’s a deep look at how Amazon’s logo evolved.
1. 1995–1997: The “River A” Logo
Amazon’s first official logo, created in 1995 by Turner Duckworth, featured a stylised letter “A” with a curving white line representing the Amazon River running through it. Beneath it sat the text Amazon.com. This design directly reflected Jeff Bezos’s vision of using the world’s largest river as a metaphor for scale and ambition.
The logo successfully introduced the brand’s name and symbolism, but it was visually literal and not yet optimised for the emerging digital environment.
2. 1997–1998: The Zebra-Pattern Experiment
In 1997, Amazon debuted a brief redesign featuring a pattern on the “A” symbol, known as topographic lines, branches, or zebra stripes. Despite its boldness, this branding exploration lacked the clarity required for a rapidly expanding internet business and was visually confusing. It was withdrawn after a little over a year.
Amazon also changed the typography, making it stronger and more contemporary, but it still lacked the brand identity that would help it go forward into the next stage of its development.
3. 1998: The Move Toward Simplicity
In 1998, Amazon abandoned the “A” symbol altogether and introduced a clean wordmark, “Amazon.com,” paired with the tagline “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” The logo shifted toward simplicity and clarity, reflecting Amazon’s growing authority in online retail.
Amazon made another experiment later that year, using a black-and-yellow colour scheme with a bright yellow circle to represent the letter “O.” These versions helped prepare the groundwork for Amazon’s transition beyond books.
4. 1998–2000: The Underline Era
Between 1998 and 2000, Amazon refined its logo into a lowercase wordmark with a minimal underline beneath “Amazon.com.” This underline suggested speed, motion, and delivery—foreshadowing what would become central to the brand’s identity.
By this time, Amazon was expanding rapidly in product categories and geographies, and the logo needed a cleaner, more scalable presentation.
5. 2000: The Birth of the Iconic Smile
In 2000, Turner Duckworth unveiled the design that would shape Amazon for the next quarter century: the curved arrow stretching from “A” to “Z.”
This mark had three meanings: a smile representing consumer joy, a hint of speedy delivery, and a promise to provide “everything from A to Z”.
This revamp became Amazon’s defining global symbol. Amazon’s logo, featuring a pleasant curve and modern Officina Sans typography, embodies the company’s straightforward, innovative, and customer-centric culture.
6. 2000–2025: Stability and Global Recognition
Amazon’s logo remained the same for nearly two decades. The design has proven quite versatile across international markets, packaging tape, websites, and applications. Few businesses stick with one identity for this long, proving the power and clarity of the logo.
7. 2025: The First Major Update in 20 Years
In 2025, Amazon revealed its first major logo update since 2000. The redesign by Koto expanded the smile arrow and refreshed it with a more vibrant orange, giving the logo a fuller, more expressive curve. The change aimed to emphasise a “deeper and more emphatic smile,” reflecting Amazon’s mission to delight customers.
” Our focus was on restoring clarity and confidence. A shared system linking every sub-brand back to the parent. One system, strong enough to carry across 50+ lines of business, flexible enough to stretch across global markets, audiences and teams. The goal was to make Amazon feel unified again, and recapture the magic of finding exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.”
The redesign aligned with broader industry trends toward warmer, friendlier giant corporation identities. Sharper shapes and a brighter orange make the logo easier to read at any size, ensuring it stays clear on phones, apps, devices, and in all lighting conditions. This change is indicative of a larger trend in the industry toward logos that are more adaptive, expressive, and responsive in modern digital contexts.
A Logo That Grew with the Brand
The evolution of Amazon’s logo mirrors the company’s rise from niche online bookstore to one of the world’s most powerful tech ecosystems. Each redesign reflected Amazon’s growth stage, from establishing trust to simplifying its identity to communicating scale, speed, and customer happiness.
