Prescott's Design Blog

News of airline merges induce a collective yawn in the general populous. No one cares. All airlines are the same, with a few striking exceptions (Emirates for luxury, Virgin America for innovation, JetBlue for straightalk, EasyJet for price). So when two corporate dullards announce they are merging, I didn’t exactly hop to the keyboard.

But now the proposed new logo has emerged, visible on the temporary website Let’s Fly Together. In short, United wins the name game, and Continental wins the graphic battle. Kinda like when a newly married woman changes her name, but gets to determine the religion of the children. Or something.

Trouble is, I think they got it backwards.

As far as naming goes, Continental sounds bigger, more grand, iconic, enduring, mythic, and geographically-taming. Yes, it also sounds more European, but let’s leave that alone for now. United, while part of the name of the country in which it operates, is vague, subjective, and perhaps outdated. Are the States really united? Or are they just geographically bound, tied together with 18th century ideals and a loose collection of archaic commerce laws. Doesn’t United sounds vaguely communistic as well?

And as far as logos go, the blue-only, dull serifs with globe icon is as hackneyed and outplayed as the cubicle in which is was conceived (in 1958). It screams corporate, 20th century blah, not innovative 21st century aspirations. A globe? Really? Couldn’t think of anything more interesting for an icon? In the lock-up, the word Airlines is larger than United, which just looks unbalanced. We known you’re an airline. (although now that I think about it, airline brands are so vague they could be for anything and don’t actually indicate anything to do with aviation (save for the occasional bird)).

My hope is that they will take on a more comprehensive brand identity update once the two companies have properly merged. It’s a great opportunity to reinvent airline branding in the same manner that the companies are hoping to reinvent their newly merged selves. But since the best brands are reflections rather than aspirations, we’ll either see something repetitive and corporate, or something woefully optimistic — pie-in-the-sky, if you’ll pardon the pun.

But just for the sake of graphic argument, here’s approximately what it would have looked like the other way: