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Comment by shasta | Hacker News Reader

I had noticed neither that the arrow in Amazon's logo points from A to Z nor that the arrow resembles a smile. My guess is that the only competitive advantage resulting from such design flourishes is the free press you get from designers discussing your logo.

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Have you ever noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo? I'm always surprised how few people have "seen" it.

Go look now: https://www.google.com/#q=fedex+logo if you don't know what I'm talking about

Whoa, that is so well done that it is almost subliminal.

Wow. I wonder if there is any subliminal power to the FedEx and Amazon arrows. Shouldn't be too hard to AB test, which makes me think it was deliberate.

Here's a good write-up on the Fedex logo..

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-fam...

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing! They're a very early adopter of technology enabled supply chain integration, so it's interesting to see where else they are on the leading edge.

Can't believe I never caught that until now... and now I can't "unsee" it. Impressive.

No matter how many times people show me that arrow, I just cannot see it. Maybe I'm a visual idiot.

Helps? http://toneiusmaximus.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/090113-fed...

Helps, but this arrow is really invisible, because you see the letters first, not the arrow - your brain is not wired to decode letters this way. The Amazon logo is more clever in that sense.

http://xkcd.com/960/

Personally, I prefer the taiwanese recycling symbol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recycle_symbol_Taiwan.svg

Because you didn't notice it, it must not have any effect? Isn't that like saying because you don't notice a site or city's layout, it has no effect? Or that because you didn't notice the addition of cumin to a dish, it had no effect?

A logo is nothing like a city layout.

That's a silly analogy. The effect of a logo is the impression on people. The layout of a city has concrete effects that people will notice regardless of whether they are aware of the layout itself or not. It's questionable whether an arrow in your logo that nobody notices will have any effect apart from designers talking about your logo.

Completely agree that the Amazon logo is a pretty questionable example of a "great logo" and the story doesn't really improve it. I'm increasingly often thinking that the Twitter logo is genius. That little bird is so recognizable – and endearing!

I didn't notice the arrow in Amazon's logo points from A to Z, but that's because it's pointing from A to O.

Shouldn't downvote someone for pointing out a fact - it does point to O. I've messed about with it in Photoshop to make it point more at the Z but it ended up looking visually unbalancedso I guess there's some designer's license at work here.

I guess the logo designer failed to solve this issue.

Alpha->Omega then

A to Z comes up quite a bit with Amazon. The claim is that "Amazon's selection goes from A to Z".

Amazon has a development center named A2Z. There's also Lab126... Lab 1-26... Lab 'A'-'Z'.

The e's in the Heineken logo are rotated a little to represent a 'smile'. Not a lot of people will see this but the logo gets a 'softer' feeling because of it so people will somehow notice it.

It’s a lot like the difference between shitty code that is barely held together and happens to work, and really well written code that is beautiful from end to end.

It’s sometimes invisible to the user, but these details are indicative of a software (or company or brand) that is intrinsically well-designed.

(another example I’ve seen bandied about is shitty wood veneer vs well-crafted hardwood furniture)

The problem with the Amazon logo is the swooshy arrow is a massive cliche, and whether or not they have clever reasons for the design, the result looks like yet another unimaginitive cookie cutter text+swoosh emblem.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020815054059/50cups.com/swoosh/

While I never noticed it pointing A->Z, I did always recognize it as a smile. I guess it depends on your perspective.

Don't know how you'd quantify this, but I imagine people have a subliminal response to the smile whether they know they see it or not. Like pleasant chord construction in music. I've also heard it's the reason watches in magazines are always set to a time around 10:10 or 2:50 to make it seem like a smiling face.

I also never noticed the arrow in the Amazon logo went from A to Z, bu I wonder if it had a subconscious effect... (Same with the FedEx arrow before I noticed it)

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