Yesterday, I’ve spotted that the default font on the main Amazon website has been changed from the Arial to the new typeface.
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When you inspect the code with the browser’s developer tools, you’ll see that the new font is called “Amazon Ember.”
Yes, it’s the same sans-serif font that was designed for Kindle Oasis by font foundry Dalton Maag, and released together with the top-shelf Amazon e-reader in April 2016. Following the introduction, Ember was being added in software updates of other Kindle e-readers.
When you visit Amazon.com website, you’ll quickly see the change. It takes some time to load the font file for the first time, so you may be even able to see how the font changes from Arial to Ember.
It’s possible that Amazon is only testing the new font on a website, and it doesn’t mean Ember will replace Arial anytime soon.
The new “.a-ember” class was added to the body level, so every child element without the specified font family will now display Ember. A few lines were added to css stylesheet, that’s all. It’s a simple way to test something. If Ember, for some reason, will not work as a website font, returning to Arial will be easy.
Below, you can see how the example page on Amazon website looks with Arial and Ember fonts.
As you see, the content of a specific product page is almost in 100% displayed in Amazon Ember: product title, description, shipping details, reviews, and even the button texts.
What hasn’t changed is the text in the top navigation bar, sidebars, and footer. Also, most of the text in browse and search pages is still displayed in Arial. As I said: every element that has a defined font family won’t be overridden by Ember.
Amazon is improving the online store constantly. Recently, the Spanish-language option has been released to easier reach over 50 million Spanish-speaking customers in the US.
For now on, Ember appears on the main Amazon website, at amazon.com. I’ve checked the websites localized in other countries, but haven’t seen the new font so far.
It’s worth noting that someone spotted Ember two months ago on the Amazon store in the UK. The font, however, was removed quickly.
Ember font on Amazon website
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