Observe and learn how leading brand names work with visual identity.
- Choose a well established, international brand name. Some examples are H&M, Nike, Amazon, KFC, Mercedes, Virgin, Sony. You are free to choose another. Research the history and origin of the brand name and write down your findings.
- Compare the history of the name with the current logo and brand.
- Write down your own conclusions about how the logo relates to its history.
- Now write about how the logo or brand relates to its current target audience. Note if any changes were made to the original brand to achieve this or not.
- Collect examples of how this brand is applied across different platforms with at least five different touchpoints (for example, digital campaigns, social media, large format, signage, packaging, specialised campaigns and so forth). Discuss how a consistent visual identity was established across the different touchpoints. Consider the brand application in terms of logo, icon, colour, type, texture, photography etc.
I chose Amazon.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 under the name “Cadabra”. But to the importance of thoughtful branding, Bezos would change the name a year later to “Amazon” after realizing the original name’s phonic resemblance to the word cadaver. At that time, Amazon sold only books. Within the first two months of being online, Amazon was selling books in 45 different countries and generating a revenue of $20,000 a week.
Even with initial success like this, Amazon’s slow growth frustrated many investors. The business plan for Amazon outlined that the company didn’t expect to be profitable for four to five years and instead insisted that all of the company’s revenue be focused on growth and expansion. In 2000 though, when the dot-com bubble burst and killed off many online stores, Amazon was one of the only vital players left standing. This led the company to turn its first profit in 2001 of $5 million.
What started as an online bookstore has since grown into a massive corporation with a hand in almost everything.
The font used on the logo between 1998 and 2000 was known as Officina Sans Bold. Since then the Amazon font is custom designed. At first, their focus was online bookstore and you can see that in their first logo’s. They are not that informative, but just classic and simple. From there to now they have really been smart on how to portray their brand through their logo, the word Amazon means “Massive,” and that’s what Amazon wants to portray. Arrows have long been used to convey messages of forward progress and speed, but the arrow also look like a smile and represents the smile that Amazon puts on their customer’s faces. Lastly, the arrow points from «A» to the «Z» in amazon, which indicate that they sell everything from A to Z.
Amazon’s Big Game Commercial: Mind reader:
Amazon holiday ad:
Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology:
They have different ads for specific groups of people, this is an example:
Amazon’s Twitter campaign is today less heavy on promotions than it used to be, and instead serves as a vehicle for driving its 2.7 million followers towards Amazon’s additional services such as Prime Video and Amazon Music. The Amazon Twitter feed is also used to promote the company’s blog content – a lot of which offers small business advice to those selling on Amazon – and deliver news about the various things and innovations the company is involved with and up to.
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