Arclight Studio Unveils New Identity for Nordic Airline

The new mark is a single line that starts at the tail fin and does not stop until it has crossed the fuselage, the boarding pass and the coffee cup.

The system has to survive people who do not care about it. That is the actual test, and it happens in procurement, in email signatures and on signage nobody briefed.

Nils Arvidsen, creative director at Arclight, has been close to it from the start.

Background

The line is drawn once, at one weight, and then cut at different points depending on where it appears. On a tail fin it is a wing; on a boarding pass it is an underscore.

Budget was fixed before the brief was finished, which is the wrong order and, everyone involved agrees, the usual one.

Rolling it out means repainting fourteen aircraft over three years, which is why the first thing anyone will actually see is the paper.

If you have to explain which part of the mark is the logo, you have made two marks.

Arvidsen

The method

The airline's previous identity used seven colours across its fleet livery. This one uses two, and a white that the studio specified as a paint rather than a print colour.

The system survives or fails on its worst application, not its best, and nobody presents that slide.

The first week brought the kind of attention nobody plans for, and the second brought the criticism that actually changed something.

What they will not say, on the record, is how close it came to being cancelled in the spring.

Where it goes

Boarding passes change next month. The first repainted aircraft flies in spring.