THE KEY CONCEPT : The deeper the arc of the frown and the more angled the clip of the eye white, the more menacing the facial expression. |
FROWNING "OUTSIDE THE BOX"
The protesters and politicians who ganged up to force Amazon to abandon its plans to set up shop in New York were ultimately successful, and their use of the flipped-over Amazon logo to express corporate evil was certainly clever but, from an expression expert’s viewpoint, left room for improvement.
Anger is one of the most misunderstood basic expressions, and more often than not (see my take down of the Trump balloon here) a few simple adjustments can make a spectacular improvement in the effect.
Figure 3. Here’s the familiar Amazon logo with a smiling arrow. (It's version #2; the first logo was a rather ugly “A” with a river running through it.) | The Amazon logo itself is also quite clever – an arrow suggesting speed & motion (i.e. fast delivery); a very subtle suggestion that it sells everything from “A to Z”; and, of course, the famous smile, complete with an anatomically-correct corner dimple. For the anti-Amazon NYC demonstration, the protesters flattened and flipped empty boxes printed with the familiar Amazon smile and added dots for eyes, clipped obliquely from above, to suggest their disapproving anger. Brilliant, but... |
- The eyes are too small, and the oblique cut above is far too slight and not angled enough to read as a scowling brow (see my post on the "Imperial Frown" here);
- The Amazon smile itself is not curved enough (see Figure 3) to make a very effective frown when flipped, unlike the “Have a Nice Day” smile in Figure 4.