Amazon has quietly changed one of its most famous logos again, having only redesigned it in January, after people started likening it to an infamous figure from history. Click or scroll on to find out more.

Amazon's shopping app logo on phones changed from the basket (pictured left) to a parcel with the famous smile logo and a strip of blue packaging tape at the top (pictured centre). Unfortunately, people took to social media and compared the jagged tape to a toothbrush-style moustache, most infamously sported by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Amazon has now changed the logo again so the blue tape is straight and folded over at the corner (pictured right), presumably to avoid any further associations with one of history's most reviled figures. 

But Amazon isn't the only company to face challenges over its logos. Altering a much-loved and instantly-recognisable company emblem is a risky business that can end in epic success or massive failure. Click or scroll through some of the best, and worst, logo redesigns of recent times.

The old iTunes logo was beginning to look decidedly passé by 2010 with its outdated CD symbol, so Apple opted for a redesign.

Instead of burning music from CDs, iTunes customers were mainly downloading tracks from the internet by 2010, so the disc icon was pretty obsolete. The latest logo is simple and retains the iconic musical note.

Marriott's former logo was nice enough but looking slightly old-fashioned by 2014, when the company's senior management decided to give it an overhaul.

Designed by Grey NY, the new logo emphasises the M and complements the stylised symbol with high-end lettering worthy of a luxury brand.

With that boring typography, the former San Diego Zoo logo lacks distinctiveness and doesn't really scream 'zoo' to anybody.

That all changed when the zoo's bosses commissioned a redesign of the logo in 2011. Green to plug the zoo's eco credentials, the new logo is fun, with letter Os that look like animal paw prints.

This former WGN America logo, which was abandoned in 2008, looks really dated. The comic book eye design is verging on creepy and the tagline is on the corny side.

The channel's marketing people saw sense and eventually dumped the eye design and corny tagline for a tasteful 'less is more' wordmark logo.

The old British National Space Centre had a dull logo back in the day, featuring an uninspired planet symbol and bland typography.

Rebranded as the UK Space Agency in 2010, the agency's new logo got the cool Britannia treatment, incorporating a clever take on the Union Flag design, not to mention up-to-the-minute typography.

The old CNN en Español logo was rather cumbersome and long winded. By 2010, execs were looking for a way to shrink it.

The design team nailed it by placing a supersized tilde accent (that little swirl you see above the letter 'n' in some Spanish words) above the CNN letters, making the logo instantly recognisable as the Spanish language version of the news channel.

The former Federal Express logo was nothing special and largely forgotten after the revamp in 1994.

Now considered a design classic, the reworked logo cleverly features a hidden arrow pointing forward between the letters E and x in Ex, representing the firm's forward-thinking ethos, as well as a possibly unintentional spoon within the e in Fed, an amusing play on the word.

As iconic logos go, the old Peace Corps emblem is up there with the most recognisable, but it does look a little busy and dated these days, hence the redesign in 2016.

A masterclass in how to simplify a logo without losing its meaning, the elegant and modern rendering of the Peace Corps emblem has been lauded by some commentators as a design triumph.

Founded in 1953, Burger King actually started off life as Insta-Burger King but after only a year rebranded as just Burger King. Its first logos featured a burger bun with the name inside. But in 1999 Burger King unveiled this logo, which added a blue crescent around the burger bun and put the burger and the text on a slant. This logo lasted 21 years until 21 December 2020 when Burger King decided to make a change.

And so Burger King revealed a new stripped-back logo. The simpler approach is part of the brand's journey to move from being a meat-focused fast food chain to a company moving towards healthier ingredients. Unsurprisingly the retro design has seen many compare it to Burger King's older logo from the 90s, and its designer Jones Knowles Ritchie says that was done on purpose as Burger King wants to play on a feeling of nostalgia for the brand. And it's working, as many customers have praised the burger chain's new but familiar look.

South Korean carmaker KIA's old logo was a simple affair. Separate capital letters, with just the missing horizontal bar on the 'A', little serif touches at the top of the letters, and an oval badge that made it stand out. The logo had been introduced in 1994 and updated in 2004, but in early January 2021 KIA revealed not just a changed logo, but a new slogan too...

KIA's new logo features joined-up letters intended to reflect handwriting, and a slogan of "Movement that inspires" replacing its former "Power to surprise" message. The new lettering still misses the bar on the "A", but has a more italic appearance to create a sense of movement that reflects its new motto. The rebrand is part of KIA's business strategy to become a leader in the global market by focusing on electric cars and other non-traditional vehicles. Many have praised the redesign as a marked improvement on the car-maker's previously dated-looking badge.

Until recently, America's General Motors has always kept things simple with its logo. The classic design with underlined capital letters and dark navy blue background had undergone minimal tweaks in more than 50 years. But as the car industry evolves, so has GM's approach to branding...

Now, for the first time since 1938, the logo has been lowercased, and the navy blue background has been replaced by a brighter 'electric' blue border that is meant to signify "the clear skies of a zero-emissions future" and the car giant's move into electric vehicles. Some have even commented that the lower case 'm' resembles an electric plug. That's certainly on brand for GM's future.

The clothing retailer was hit with a barrage of protests via Twitter and Facebook when it attempted to change its famous serif, skinny-lettered upper case logo, pictured here, in 2010.

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Gap intended to replace the serif upper case wordmark with sans-serif lower case type and shrink the blue square, but the protests prompted the company to scrap the radical redesign.

Airbnb faced a similar social media backlash when it changed its familiar bubbly blue wordmark logo in 2014.

A slew of cheeky tweeters compared the red squiggly design, which the short-term rental site calls 'Belo', to various female and male private parts. According to the company, the design actually denotes "the universal symbol of belonging".

The familiar Black & Decker logo, which was revamped in 2014, features a hexagonal nut symbol and bold, confident type.

Swapping the hexagonal nut symbol, bold black lettering and ampersand for softer, more contemporary type in orange and a trendy plus sign, many commentators have concluded that the logo has lost its distinctiveness and DIY vibe, and looks blandly generic.

The former logo for this popular jobs website was simple and uncomplicated with just two colours and one lower-case font.

CareerBuilder's in-house designers reworked the logo in 2015 and appear to have got rather carried away. Several critics judged the logo a bit of a mess, with too many colours, font sizes and effects going on.

The old Netflix logo evokes classic Hollywood movie studio typography with its thin white lettering and bold black shadowing on a red background.

The new logo, which launched in 2014, is a mere skeleton of the former design. Many people feel it no longer triggers the strong association with Hollywood and the movies.

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Before its makeover, leading pharmaceutical company Merck had a suitably science-worthy logo boasting sensible typography and rectangular symbols that resemble coalescing particles or DNA marker test results.

The big pharma behemoth had a marketing makeover in 2015, unveiling a weird off-brand wordmark logo with the sort of retro-futuristic typography you'd expect to find on an 80s arcade cabinet.

Accused of dumbing down and alienating its core viewers, the Sci-Fi Channel rebranded as Syfy in 2009, ditching the old logo in the process.

Much to the annoyance of its viewers, the channel jettisoned the ringed planet symbol and opted for bold child-like lettering to spell out what many think is an infantile new name.

Tthe Syfy channel decided to switch things up again in 2017, and went with this yellow and black version instead. While the font seems a lot more appropriate for the brand, the channel doesn't get any bonus points after having decided to keep the strange alternative spelling of Sci-Fi.

The budget US airline had a fairly sensible run-of-the-mill airline logo before its senior execs plumped for a rebrand in 2014.

The replacement sketch-like logo is meant to show off the no-frills ethos of the airline, but several commentators have remarked that it makes the planes look shabby and poorly maintained – clearly not the image Spirit intended to project.

Following the criticism Spirit Airlines rebranded again, although this time the company just coloured in the parts of the wording that were missing in the sketched version. While the new logo is a lot cleaner, it does make you wonder why the airline didn't just go with this simpler version in the first place.

 

America's Central Intelligence Agency has long had a traditional badge style logo featuring a bald eagle to represent the nation's strength. But as it seeks to diversify and recruit new talent, its logo and website went under a bit of a makeover, including two new logos...

The CIA revealed a new website redesign and logos at the beginning of 2021 – the first update since 2013 – to demonstrate how dynamic the agency is and to attract hires from diverse backgrounds. The first new logo for the CIA has echoes of the old one, but is in a monochrome format. However, the secondary logo has been causing a little more controversy...

The second logo is also monochrome with sans-serif lettering, but features fractal lines in the background. The traditional eagle has been removed. But people have criticised this new logo for looking too abstract and more like a music event poster than a government agency logo.  The controversy doesn't end there, as there is confusion about who actually designed the new logos. Artist Ryder Ripps, who has worked with Kanye West, Grimes, Marc Jacobs and others, took credit for the first design (at least) on Instagram but the CIA has denied Ripps was involved. However, it's still unclear if it will replace the agency's main branding beyond its website.

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