Do you have the Amazon shopping app on your phone? If you do, you may have noticed that the familiar shopping cart app logo has been replaced with a new look. We’ll wait. We know you’re clicking over to check out what Amazon’s app looks like on your phone right now. Be sure to come back here to find out why it recently changed.
Ready to continue? Good.
The previous Amazon app logo on iOS and Android featured a white background with a blue shopping cart, the word “amazon” and an orange smile-shaped arrow below the company name. If the app has yet to be updated on your phone, that might be the logo you saw.
According to Amazon, the company decided to change the app’s look “to spark anticipation, excitement and joy when customers start their shopping journey on their phone, just as they do when they see our boxes on their doorstep.”
The new Amazon logo is the color of a cardboard box. It features the familiar Amazon smile-shaped arrow, but that’s not all. There is also a blue spot at the top of the logo. The original version of this blue patch featured a zig-zag edge, you know, like packing tape, but some people thought this blue patch looked too much like Hitler’s mustache.
After having its app logo compared to Hitler, Amazon has quietly modified the new logo. Now, the blue packing tape at the top of the logo has a straight edge and has one corner turned up. Watch the video below to learn more about why Amazon modified the logo.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of what the original redesign of the app looked like (on the left) compared to the quietly modified version of the app (on the right).
lmao I completely missed that amazon quietly tweaked its new icon to make it look… less like hitler pic.twitter.com/Jh8UC8Yg3u
— alex hern (@alexhern) March 1, 2021
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. According to the New York Times, he said, “It is always important for people to speak up when they see patterns in advertising or in design that could potentially be offensive. While in many cases these are unintentional, people are rightfully sensitive to these issues because of the history and the use of symbolism by racists and anti-Semites from the Nazis to the present white supremacist movement.”
Do you think the original redesign of the Amazon app looked like Hitler’s mustache? Do you think the redesign of the app will “spark anticipation, excitement and joy” more so than the shopping cart icon did?
