Alibaba

Color can reduce advertising costs by 35%

Alibaba was a travel and tourism agency in Qaytarieh, Tehran, which operated traditionally.
In July 2014, after the unveiling of the Alibaba website as an online air ticket sales system, this company sought to gain a larger share of the country’s tourism market. Changing the position required fundamental changes in the designs and visual elements of Alibaba.
Design Vand consulting company was invited to create a comprehensive and integrated image identity for this brand. Wend team’s cooperation with Alibaba managers continued during the following years and in line with the company’s growth, in the branding projects of Tosha Investment Holding (Alibaba’s investor) and the visual identity design of sub-brands such as Zoroq and Jabama. The visual identity of all sub-brands needed to converge around a completely new development objective that took into account the needs, behaviors and expectations of today’s customers.

According to the attitude of the strategy team of DesignVand, first you should pay attention to the brand name and then go to the logo design. Therefore, the main solution in this project was very clear: the logo design should resemble Alibaba’s face so that the audience recognizes it.
Alibaba logo design went through a complicated process. Alibaba is a famous character in literary stories and anecdotes, so there are various associations and faces of him. Ali Baba is the adventurous Sinbad who is famous for his travels and adventures among Iranians, but many others remember him with the story of the forty thieves of Baghdad. This personality has also stepped into the world of business and the Chinese Alibaba online store owned by “Jack Ma” is very famous in the world. Our strategic action in designing the logo, while referring to the familiar elements of this character, was to create a special shape and image for Alibaba in accordance with its Iranian narrative. We designed a face that is adventurous, energetic and exciting to create a clear distinction with the Chinese Alibaba and other associations.
The details of the face were conceptualized using elements related to the tourism industry. The eyebrow of this dummy is designed in the shape of an airplane, which shows the nature of Ali Baba’s business.
Our important creativity in this project was dynamic logo design. We predicted different modes for Alibaba’s face; including sad, angry, happy and smiling states. In our opinion, the inclusion of emotional flexibility in the logo allowed the brand to respond appropriately to the various issues of the day. This initiative has a positive effect on the branding of the brand name in the mind and conscience of the audience.
The clothes of Alibaba’s character in the narratives do not have a specific shape and color. Various color palettes were deeply examined and finally we chose yellow color for the Alibaba logo for several reasons: firstly because it matched the energetic and exciting personality of Alibaba and secondly because the color yellow is less used in the tourism industry and therefore it could Make a distinction.

The result of sustainable cooperation and Vand with Alibaba was the creation of a unified visual identity in a family of prestigious Iranian tourism brands. Under this cooperation, a distinct and at the same time common image identity was created for Tosha, Alibaba, and its sub-brands, Zoroq and Jabama. Such action, in addition to improving the position of these brands in the tourism industry, created a large field of action for their marketing and sales.
According to the strategic design logic, we proposed different designs for brands in Alibaba projects according to the audience and the nature of the activities; But the link of the visual identity of the brands of the Alibaba collection is the representation of an exciting and energetic personality through the cartoon space of the logos. This identity provides the basis for a cohesive brand architecture that connects different initiatives, programs and ideas and supports the organization’s growth vision across business areas.