Come fly away. Going places.

• Author: Huhne, Matthias C.
• Position: Going Places - Air travel

FOR THOUSANDS of years, manned flight was an unreachable dream. From this historic perspective, modern air travel seems a most unlikely event. Yet, after the humble, historic 1903 flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, N.C., there simply was no stopping this dream from becoming a reality.

The first half of the 20th century saw new aircraft being developed at a breathtaking pace and, by 1970, millions of tourists and business travelers were flying around the globe in Boeing 747 jet aircraft. Two important developments took place simultaneously between 1945-75 that make this time period of unique interest for an analysis of the visual identities of airline companies.

First, the period after World War II marked the beginning of air travel on a much more significant scale, when the big aircraft and advanced technologies developed during the war were put into civilian operation. It was a rebirth for civil aviation, which had been all but suspended during the war. The Jet Age began in the late 1950s and, by the mid 1970s, all major leaps in air travel innovation had been completed--in terms of the size and comfort of aircraft (as represented by the Boeing 747), speed (embodied by the supersonic Concorde), and availability of destinations.

Second, this time period marked a fundamental change in the notion of corporate identity. By 1945, after nearly two decades of experimentation, the visual identity of airlines had reached a degree of maturity. It was customary for corporations at this time to have their symbols and marketing materials created on a case-by-case basis by designers and artists on behalf of the marketing department or the company's advertising agency. Several different designers or artists could work simultaneously for the same company on different assignments. This system was derived from the product-oriented marketing methods developed in the 1920s. The designs thus produced often were very attractive and far from ineffective, but they lacked the integrated, highly disciplined, almost scientific approach of modern branding, which proved superior.

The 1950s marked a turning point. The multitude of individual designs and campaigns had made it more and more difficult to differentiate a single product. At the same time, it had become increasingly acknowledged that the visual appearance and the "personality" of a corporation somehow communicate, without the use of words, its values. Therefore, it would be advantageous to make a...