HONG KONG  - Alibaba is giving ancient Chinese characters a modern edge. The $500 billion e-commerce company developed a new font to write in 171 other languages, too, in a quest for unique and consistent branding that can be read as easily on smartphones as skyscrapers. This sort of vanity project, though, has become decidedly less quirky.

Silicon Valley startups strut using Super Bowl commercials and splashy new headquarters. They have also differentiated themselves with bespoke accounting metrics, including Groupon’s  adjusted consolidated segment operating income and WeWork’s community-adjusted EBITDA. Fonts are the latest trophy asset. Alibaba Sans joins, among others, Airbnb Cereal, Apple’s San Francisco, HP Simplified, IBM Plex, Samsung One and Uber Move on the increasingly crowded page of tailor-made typefaces. Jack Ma’s outfit has added a flourish: if a user spells “Alibaba” using the font, the letters A and L redraw themselves to match the way they appear in the corporate logo.

There are legitimate business reasons for such investments. Netflix, for one, said its typeface would help reduce the marketing budget because of the recurring licensing fees paid to font foundries. It also can be a clever brand-building strategy. Alibaba is giving away its Sans for free, including for commercial use. This might enlist millions of merchants and customers to adopt the font, perhaps helping to make it more easily noticed on cluttered Chinese apps. If installed as a system font, Alibaba’s would appear near the top of alphabetised drop-down menus in word processors and graphic-design tools.

The proliferation of custom types risks commodifying them, and increasingly comes off as a chase for elite status. It may be time to find a new way to stand apart. Perhaps an entrepreneur will invent a series of numbers to replace the boring old Arabic ones. Or maybe some chief executive will even take the bold step of printing text on paper. The bar for distinction is rising.

On Twitter https://twitter.com/jgfarb

 

CONTEXT NEWS

- Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba on April 26 unveiled a new custom typeface, Alibaba Sans, and said it would be free to use for all partners, merchants and customers across its services.

- The font was designed in partnership with Monotype by Akira Kobayashi, who also designed Sony’s SST.

- For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on GOLDFARB/

- SIGN UP FOR BREAKINGVIEWS EMAIL ALERTS: http://bit.ly/BVsubscribe

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(Editing by Pete Sweeney and Sharon Lam) ((jeffrey.goldfarb@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: jeffrey.goldfarb.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))