Why This Airline's New Logo Took Four Years
By Sana Kovač
Three scrapped directions, one change of chief executive, and a mark that survived because a single engineer liked it on a tail fin mock-up.
Identity work is judged twice: once in the room where it is presented, and once, much later, by people who never saw the presentation and have no idea a decision was made.
Sana Kovač, who was given access to the project files, has been close to it from the start.
The decision
The studio presented in year one, year two and year four. The mark that shipped is closest to the year-one work, redrawn at a different weight.
Budget was fixed before the brief was finished, which is the wrong order and, everyone involved agrees, the usual one.
The internal politics, not the design, is the story here, and both sides now agree on that.
Nothing was wrong with the first route. There was simply nobody left in the room who had approved it.
one person close to the project
In practice
The delay cost the airline a repaint cycle, which means fourteen aircraft flew for two years in a livery nobody intended to keep.
The work will be judged on the boring surfaces: the app, the boarding pass, the sign above a desk in a regional office. That is where identities actually live.
The first week brought the kind of attention nobody plans for, and the second brought the criticism that actually changed something.
They are careful about what they claim. Two of the decisions that look deliberate now were, by their own account, the only option left by the time anyone noticed.
What comes next
The full identity lands next month, four years and one chief executive later.
