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For the first time in more than 20 years, Amazons logo got a touch-up. In fact, all of its logos got a touch-up. The small but subtle changes are part of a company-wide brand system refinement, bringing together more than 50 Amazon sub-brands across categories like pharmacy, groceries, and on-demand streaming under a single brand umbrella. Typography was key to making it all work.A pair of bespoke fonts, Amazon Logo Sans and Ember Modern, tie Amazon products and services together with a unified brand voice that has flexibility for different contexts. This is a brand thats everywhere, from cardboard boxes to music to prescriptions, and needed to adapt to convey boldness and excitement in use cases like entertainment, but trustworthiness in its healthcare divisions.[Image: Amazon]Koto Studio, the creative agency that worked on the brand system and refresh, started the endeavor by thinking of Amazons master brand logo as a type specimen, not just a mark. (Though they did plump up its arrow to give it a deeper smile.) The team refined the letterforms in the logo, which eventually became the foundation for a font.The biggest challenge was the sheer scale, Koto New York executive creative director Arthur Foliard tells Fast Company of the Amazon brand refresh. Amazons brand had become visually fragmented. Every product or service seemed to have its own logo. It was a sea of arrows with no clear system or structure.Under the new brand system, the Amazon family of sub-brands, house brands, and core services, from Amazon Basics to Amazon Kids, now have a unified logo system set in the new proprietary Amazon Logo Sans.[Image: Amazon]Ember Modern is a new version of the typeface Amazon originally designed for Kindle screen. Koto updated it with characters for 366 languages and seven weights so it can be used globally in instances like high-impact headlines or for text-heavy, long-form reading. Its a typeface designed for versatility.They also updated the companys color palette to standardize its main brand color, Smile Orange; tweak its blue to a more saturated, digital-friendly shade; and give each sub-brand its own bright, expressive color scheme. Amazon Fresh, its grocery delivery business, uses shades of green to communicate freshness, while Amazon One Medical, its primary care provider, uses a turquoise green reminiscent of scrubs.Historically, Amazon teams moved fast, spinning up businesses and logos on the fly to meet customer demand, Foliard says. That agility was great, but it sometimes led to brand fragmentation. [Image: Amazon]Going forward, the agency left the company with an automated [amazon]:name command to generate future consistent logos instantly, plus a full logo architecture to define what needs a logo and what doesnt.With its new brand system and font book, Amazon is better positioned to express its brand and sub-brands across a growing number of categories. If Alexa is the audible voice of Amazon the brand, Amazon Logo Sans and Ember Modern are the brands voice in print.
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E-Commerce
During his campaign, President Trump made a lot of promises about what he would do during a second term. One of those promises was to roll back the civil and social rights of transgender people. And in his first 100 days in office, Trump has been delivering on expelling transgender rights from the U.S., unlike with other promises like improving the economy. Starting from his first day in office, Trump has attacked the trans community from all anglesin rhetoric and in policy. He has removed workplace protections for trans people and disallowed gender-affirming medical care. In just a few months, here’s what Trump has done to turn back the clock for the trans community and transgender rights. An executive order to recognize only two genders On Trump’s first day, he signed a flurry of executive orders. Among them was an order declaring that the U.S. government will now only recognize a persons gender assigned at birth. It also set forth that the U.S. would recognize only two genders, male and female. The order states: Gender ideology replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.” The executive order meant that the U.S. would not recognize transgender, nonbinary, or intersex people, or even the idea that gender can be fluid. With the order, the State Department has ceased to issue passports with an “X” in the gender category, forcing trans individuals to return to using a gender category that doesn’t align with their identity. Banning trans Americans from military service Trump banned transgender Americans from serving openly in the military, rolling back Biden-era protections. The move didn’t come as a surprise, given that Trump had spoken frequently about the plan during his campaign. “If you want to have a sex change or a social justice seminar, then you can do it somewhere else, but you’re not going to do it in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Space Force, or the United States Marinessorry,” Trump said at a preelection rally. An estimated 15,000 transgender individuals are currently serving in the U.S. military. Lawsuits against Trump’s order have already been filed by transgender active-duty members of the military, as well as those attempting to join. Last week, Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow the enforcement of a ban on transgender people in the military as those legal challenges continue. Gutting DEI and allowing for workplace discrimination The Trump administration quickly gutted DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies from federal organizations. The move is likely to hit the transgender community hard, as hiring discrimination is rampant for the group. But the administration also made specific moves to target trans individuals in the workplace. On January 29, the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to federal organizations explaining that agency heads should place any workers whose jobs entail promoting gender ideology on leave. It called for the closing of all programs that support the concept that gender exists on a spectrum. It also banned all workers from using pronouns in email signatures, and media that may “inculcate or promote gender ideology.” Banning gender-affirming medical care In a January 28 executive order, Trump banned gender-affirming medical care for individuals under the age of 19. It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called transition of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures, the order says. Not only did the order attack trans children, but it also targeted care providers, asserting that federal funds would be restricted from doctors who provide gender-affirming care. A federal judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of the order aiming to shut down access to gender-affirming care. Banning trans individuals from using their preferred bathrooms Trump’s January 29 order also attacked transgender individuals using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. It directed agencies to designate bathrooms “by biological sex and not gender identity. In an interview with Time magazine, which named Trump 2024’s Person of the Year, the then-president-elect said, I dont want to get into the bathroom issue. Because its a very small number of people were talking about, and its ripped apart our country, so theyll have to settle whatever the law finally agrees.
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E-Commerce
For as much as the design industry exaggerates the narrative and drama around unboxing a product, Kind is one of the few brands in which the packaging really does serve the customer experience. Its clear window advertises the natural ingredients: nuts, chocolate, and minimal sugar. The wrapper offers literal transparency into what youre putting into your body.Of course we know now that plastic is as bad for our environment as it is for our biology. And Kind has spent more than two years reimagining its iconic plastic packaging as a paper wrapper that it hopes to eventually put around the hundreds of millions of bars it sells each year. Developed by Printpack, the company worked to source the right paper and fine-tune its structureensuring its both protective of food and feasible for assembly line production.Theres an expectation from our consumer that we are delivering sustainable solutions, says Kerri Clark, VP of Packaging R&D at Kind. So I think the threshold that we have to meet is a bit higher.[Photo: Kind]Developing a better wrapperThe plastic Kind bar packages of today are technically recyclable in much of the U.S., but not through convenient curbside recycling. We cant get the consumer to take extra steps, to go to another place to drop things off. Its a really big ask, Clark says. So the paper track is about driving circularity, and improving recycling rates on our Kind bar wrapper.[Photo: Kind]Swapping plastic for paper isnt so easy, though. For starters, plastic is highly durable against puncturing and creates a strong seal against the environment. Meanwhile, Kind knows its bar can have sharp edges where its cut, and that their product isnt just bought and then consumed at home. People bring them along as a snack, often shoving them deep into a bag to extract it hours later.What we dont want to do is solve one problem but then create another by having a product thats not usable to the consumer and creating food waste, Clark says.Plastic also runs easily through high-speed assembly lines, and it has just the right permeability to protect the product from oxygen and moisture without actually requiring a vacuum seal. Nuts, in particular, will go rancid if exposed constantly to air. [Plastic] has been engineered for all these years for these performance characteristics, Clark notes. Theres a reason a lot of food packaging is plastic. [Photo: Kind]The other reason, of course, is one of cost. Technically, Kinds paper packs are more expensive for Kind to produce than plastic, which the company considers a short-term cost it will swallow rather than pass along to consumers. Kind makes clear that it holds no patents or other IP on the packaging, which they hope other companies will adopt to drive down price.This isnt the paper youre going to go buy at Office Max to put in your printer. Its not the paper that were going to use for stuffing and an Amazon shipper. So part of what we need to do is to make sure that these things have a chance to be scaled, Clark says. Its really shifted the thinking. I think for most big CPGs [consumer packaged goods], it used to be so much about competitive advantage and exclusivity. With sustainability, its the opposite again.[Photo: Kind]Unwrapping a paper Kind barThe solution Kind and PrintPack developed still feels like a Kind bar. But instead of revealing the nuts within through a window, the bar is printed right onto the wrapper. That wrapper feels lovely in your handswith a heavy weight that reminds me of a fancier, hand-wrapped confectionery you might get at a fine café or bakery. The paper actually needs enough fiber inside to be a circular material, and Id argue it feels all-around more premium as a result. (Its actually a bit more bulky than the plastic pack, too, which leads to some interesting psychology around the portion size.)Tear open the pack, and youll feel a waxy interior. This is a plastic-free, FDA-approved water-based coating that, in lieu of plastic, creates a barrier protecting the bar from the aforementioned air and water. To validate the packaging before launch, Kind ran a few tests. It used digital modeling to simulate the performance of the pack. It employed accelerated testing, subjecting the bars to high humidity and heat in attempts to stress the packaging to its limits fast. And the company has also simply wrapped up bars and put them into storage, and checks on them periodically to see how theyve aged. The company also ran a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pilot project with the packs in 2023.Were really taking this test-and-learn approachwhere were going to try some things, were going to make sure that were not going to have those negative trade-offs on shelf life and product quality and the eating experience, Clark says. But also, does the consumer understand that its still a Kind bar? Do I need to literally see the product or does [our motto of] ingredients you can see and pronounce mean that I know whats in this? And for Kind, that question is of paramount importance, so it will be tracking sales closely to see if the new packaging impacts its shelf appeal.For now, the new paper packs are part of a limited test that will run through October 1, launching exclusively at Whole Foods Market stores in Arizona, Southern California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Assuming they perform well, the paper packs could make their way to all Kind bars within a few years.
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E-Commerce
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