What Is the Amazon Logo?
The Amazon logo is the name amazon.com in lower-case letters with an orange arrow beneath it that runs from the a to the z and curves up into a smile. Amazon introduced this design in January 2000, and the arrow carries two messages at once: the company sells everything from A to Z, and its customers should leave happy. Amazon.com, Inc. is the online retailer Jeff Bezos founded in 1994, which opened for business as an online bookshop in July 1995.
Amazon also uses the smile on its own, on shipping boxes and on its shopping app icon. The wordmark with the smile is available as the Amazon logo SVG.
Amazon Logo Facts
| Designer | Turner Duckworth |
| Introduced | January 2000 |
| Symbol | An orange arrow from a to z that forms a smile |
| Logo type | Combination mark: wordmark with the smile arrow |
| Earlier mark | The name amazon.com above a downward curve |
| Owner | Amazon.com, Inc. |
What the Amazon Logo Means
Amazon's own announcement in January 2000 described the idea precisely: the smile begins under the a and ends with a dimple under the z. The company said the design was meant to express customer satisfaction and its aim of being the most customer-centric company in the world. Its vice president of marketing at the time, Jaleh Bisharat, said the new logo exuded happiness and was fresh and unique.
Turner Duckworth, the agency behind the design, explains it in plainer terms. Amazon's earlier logo had a generic line under the name that curved downwards, so the designers took that frown and turned it upside down. Turning the line into an arrow let the smile show, quite literally, that Amazon sold everything from A to Z.
The A-to-Z idea travels inside the company too. Amazon's device lab, Lab126, takes its name from the same arrow: 1 stands for the first letter of the alphabet and 26 for the last.
Amazon Logo History
Amazon opened for business in July 1995, and by the end of that month it had shipped books to all 50 US states and 45 countries. In the late 1990s the company used a downward-curving orange line beneath the name amazon.com.
In 1998 Turner Duckworth took a brief from Jeff Bezos. The result was the smile arrow, which Amazon unveiled on 25 January 2000 with a timeline entry that read, in part, "New logo smiles back". The agency also proposed printing the smile on Amazon's shipping boxes.
In January 2021 Amazon released a new shopping app icon that dropped the word mark and kept only the smile arrow, with a patch of blue tape at the top that makes the icon look like an Amazon delivery box. Turner Duckworth has worked on the identity since 2000 and says the smile sits at the heart of Prime, Prime Video, Gaming and Alexa.
For more brands like Amazon, browse our retail logos.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the arrow in the Amazon logo mean?
It runs from the a to the z to show that Amazon sells everything from A to Z, and it curves up into a smile for customer satisfaction.
Who designed the Amazon logo?
The design agency Turner Duckworth, which took a brief from Jeff Bezos in 1998.
When did Amazon get its smile logo?
Amazon introduced it in January 2000.
What did the Amazon logo look like before the smile?
The name amazon.com sat above an orange line that curved downwards, which Turner Duckworth described as a frown.
Why is Amazon's lab called Lab126?
The 1 and 26 stand for A and Z, the letters joined by the arrow in the Amazon logo.