Hi friends!

Alibaba is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology. It is one of the largest companies in the world which is known by almost everybody. Their logo is nice and positive, but in our opinion, there are a few problems which we are going to analyze and fix in this article in order to help Alibaba Group be more attractive and successful.

DISCLAIMER: This redesign is made with educational and experimental purposes, to demonstrate our approach with concrete examples and help those brands we took as references, but in no way to offend, mock or troll them. It’s important to be constructive and positive, not destructive and negative. All the pictures are just hand drawn rough sketches in order to express the design direction. Please keep that in mind.

1. The face is drawn in a lower case letter “ɑ” which, in some people’s opinion, is supposed to symbolize the “@” sign. Firstly, it doesn’t look like the “@” sign at all because it lacks the main attribute of it – the long loop around. Secondly, the first letter of Alibaba logotype is the upper case “A”, but the logo is the lower case “ɑ”. It is an inconsistency.

2. There is an opinion that the logo is drawn in a form of the lower case “ɑ” because Alibaba wanted to be humble and keep the spirit of a startup. But from a first glance it exactly looks like a head of a very proud and haughty person.

3. From a global perspective, the head is directed to the past, not future. In the most of the world the direction to the right symbolizes the future, the direction to the left symbolizes past. Before in China people wrote from right to left, but now they write from left to right. Also Alibaba is a company, which operates in the international arena, that is why, in our opinion, the logo is better when it is oriented to the right. In this case it is better perceived globally and doesn’t look to the opposite side from the logotype. Consistency is very important.

4. It’s obvious that two Alibaba logo's strokes look like two Nike logos. In addition Nike’s orange color code is #FF6600. Alibaba’s color is #FF6a00. Visually they are almost identical.

5. Alibaba has no eyes. It is a serious problem because it symbolizes blindness and lack of vision, which is not good for people, the world and business.

1. Keeping the same style, let’s fix everything at once:

1.1 Draw Alibaba’s face in the upper case “A” in order to be consistent with the first capital letter of the logotype.

1.2 Orient the head to the right, to the future. 

1.3 Add eyes of a confident man in order to express his vision of the bright future. We made the head look like it belongs to a confident, straight standing, responsible and trustworthy person.

1.4 Get rid of two elements that look like Nike logos.

1.5 Update the color to something more vibrant, saturated and energetic.

2. Let’s choose a more suitable and modern font.

In a few simple steps we have made a new alternative trademark for Alibaba which looks friendly, modern, and has correct philosophical approach. We hope that Alibaba Group will consider our proposal, which is made with the best intentions to help them be more attractive and successful.

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