My name is Michael Shumate and welcome to Logo Design Theory:
How Branding Design Really Works. If you paid a five figure fee–maybe
even a six figure fee–to one of the world's biggest branding design agencies, wouldn't you
expect a logo that would work well and be clear in all the situations where a logo should work?
Then what happened with the Continental - Anited Airlines logo? Let's talk about it.
Continental Airlines began as Varney Speed Lines in 1934
and changed its name to Continental in 1937. They have had a few different logos in their history.
In 1967, Saul Bass designed a beautiful logo for Continental. They used that logo for
over 20 years and that logo could have served them forever. It was designed in harmony with
the Core Principles of Logo Design. But for reasons I can't understand,
they wanted the new logo. They went to the branding firm of Lippincott and Margulies.
It took 14 months and who knows how much money to give them this in 1991.
It's a partial globe with 10 latitude sections and 10 longitude pairs and some very fine lines. They
rebranded their whole fleet with this logo. I don't know how many planes Continental had
at that time, but it had to be hundreds. At large sizes, the new logo is passable,
if a little busy, but a logo gets used at all different sizes and in a multitude of different
situations and with every printing and reproduction method conceivable.
I flew on Continental Airlines a few times. I noticed that on my boarding pass the thin
white lines of their logo filled in. Thin reversed lines will have a tendency to fill in with lots of
different kinds of printing. It's a fact of life. Which is why using thin lines in logo designs
is one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Logo Design. When I got on the plane, there were individual
screens in the seat backs. Nice! That's commonplace now, but it wasn't back then.
Before any movies were available, there was a welcome sign and the Continental
logo. I noticed that a lot of the serifs in the identity signature didn't show up.
And in the logo there were lots of places where the lines were so small that the individual pixels
that made them up were neither white nor the official Continental blue. It's a condition I call
"pixel mush." It happens with logos that have lines that are too small.
Pixels are a fact of modern life. You can't get away from them. That's another reason why
using thin lines in logo designs is another one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Logo Design.
Now let's see what happened with United Airlines. They were founded in 1930.
They also had an even longer string of logo designs over the years culminating
with a beautiful logo that, coincidentally, was also designed by Saul Bass, in 1974. o
Over time, trendy type and serif type were tried and abandoned, but the Saul Bass logo remained
essentially unchanged. Designed according to the Core Principles, it could have been used forever.
Then United Airlines and Continental Airlines merged. It started in 2010 and finalized in 2012.
The combined company kept the name of United but used the Continental logo.
In effect, they traded in two good Saul Bass logos for one inferior logo
that doesn't work at small sizes. Some people think that these ideas
about logo design are old-fashioned; that they don't matter in our modern technological era.
But they're dead wrong! Here's an example: in our online world,
we have such a thing as favicons. Look at these internet browser tabs near the top of the screen.
In each tab of most internet browsers a favicon appears. Ideally, they are miniature renditions
of the company logo of the site you are visiting. But they're only 16 pixels square!
Favicons are also saved on your computer whenever you bookmark a website,
also only 16 pixels square. Most of these favicons here are clear renditions of their respective
company logos. The United Airlines favicon, in the upper left corner, suffers from pixel mush.
Compare it with the favicon for any other company here and you can see the problem. The Continental
Airlines / United Airlines logo breaks one of the Seven Deadly sins of Logo Design:
thin lines tiny elements. Even one Deadly Sin of Logo Design will guarantee
that any logo will not work in situations where a logo should work.
After all, how many holes does it take to ruin a balloon?
United couldn't work with the flawed logo they got from Continental.
First, they got rid of the gold color in the logo. That helped, but it wasn't enough.
United finally realized the logo needed to be redesigned and simplified, reducing the latitude
segments from 10 to 7 and reducing the longitude pairs from 10 to 6. This allowed their thinnest
lines to be at least double in thickness, somewhat overcoming the flaw in the original design.
This simpler logo is what you see now on United's website. Look at their favicon. It
is still based on the older more complex logo. One of these days, they'll redo their favicon
based on the new and improved logo. It won't be perfect, but it will be a bit clearer.
Given that the United fleet is well over 700 planes, we can understand if it takes
a while for this simpler and clearer logo to get implemented throughout the fleet.
Too much of logo design today is hit and miss, even with the biggest branding
agencies in the world, and not just with solo designers and smaller design firms.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The core principles of branding design
are finally understood. This is not yet widely known in the design industry.
These principles transcend fad and fashion and always work.
Look how long some of these logos have been around.
Logos that have looked good for decades–even many decades–always conformed to these Core Principles.
Designing logos according to the Core Principles does not guarantee an excellent logo every time.
But violating the Core Principles does guarantee a logo will not work and will need to be replaced
like the logo for Continental and United. The Core Principles of branding design are
universal and immutable, like the law of gravity. They cannot be ignored.
Ignorance of the Core Principles–just like with the law of gravity–will not protect
you from the consequences of violating them. But the Core Principles of branding design can
be learned and they can be taught. That's what I do. It's what I'm teaching in these videos.
For more information go to logodesigntheory.com. If you found this useful, be sure to like
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