Air India's new logo at its unvealing in New Delhi, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.
Credit: PTI
Historically, traditionally, and uniquely Airline logos, lettering, and livery has been a representational emblematic ambassador and an emissary of the land and culture it flies in from. This is represented beautifully either by the Sun, a bird, wings, a swan, national flags, an orchid, national symbols, a flower, or an endemic animal such as a kangaroo or a lion. Colour palettes signified the land’s unique identity mated with a typeface and font that represents speed, flight, movement, motion, and transport.
India — with over 1.5 billion people, over thousands of languages and dialects, with centuries of documented history, a rich and myriad culture with different types of music, literature, folklore, art forms, cuisines, fabrics, fables — is today represented by Air India through a 16th century ‘Window’ or ‘Jaroka’, used by royal harems and consorts to view proceedings of the town bazaar from the palace. [Face-palm ] Ouch!
One is aghast, flabbergasted, flimflammed, bamboozled, and flummoxed by an airline identity. Why TATA-SIA, why!
The new AIR INDIA
The general reactions to the new Air India logo aside, for me the ‘jaroka’ element looked at first to be the Maharajah’s moustache. I don’t think I had goosebumps when the logo and identity was rolled out. Far from it. It was more of cold sweat and the expression you make when you stub your toe.
The old Air India typeface — both the English lettering and the Hindi varnamala text — beautifully characterised speed, movement, transport, agility, efficiency, and in some sense, flight. It also represented a wonderful romantic warmth of what India has to offer the world.
I am not sure what the new typeface intends to represent. Air India’s new lettering and typeface looks at best to be an upper case stretched morbidly obese Comic Sans Serif font with high cholesterol and triglycerides — desperately in need of liposuction, a tummy tuck and rhinoplasty.
Air India’s new logo is no way close to any representation of transportation, travel, flight, skies, a system, network — let alone India. That’s troubling because it will, at some point, peeve travellers while getting them to fly an airline that represents their needs from travel better. Congratulations and good on ya Star Alliance!
When it worked
Air India’s use of the jaroka element was part of its unique design and livery of the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s. Use of the Greek mythical half-man half-horse centaur was part of Air India’s unique market positioning during a post-colonial, fiefdom-controlled India, where the ultimate aspirational brand factor was all about travelling like royalty, and all your wishes were a command. In short, ‘Fly Like a Maharajah’.
Air India’s USP at the time was ‘Your Palace in the Sky’. Correspondingly so, the livery lived up to that image, and so did the inflight service. Imagine lobster thermidor being served in an airline in addition freshly-made dhoklas and idlis for breakfast; Indian patterns and motifs in the interior, with bright, colourful sequined patterns embedded did the job well with taking India, a mystical land with royalty, wealth and elements of culture to the world. Air India’s livery, appearance, bright colours, crew uniforms, the floral and paisley pattern on the flight attendant sarees — it all worked superbly with creating that curiosity with India while egging one to discover.
That’s missing in the new branding.
Whodunit?
In my past three decades in the business, I’ve seen some of the finest, impactful, and captivating airline livery’s and logo’s being recreated: SkyTeam, Star Alliance, and the OneWorld Alliance logo; the superbly simplistic Lufthansa rebranding; Cathey Pacific, Quantas,, Malaysia Airlines, Thai Airways, United Airlines, Southwest, SWISS, British Airways, Alitalia, Iberia, Air New Zealand, and Vietnam Airlines are some among them. Nearly all these airline liveries and logos at a glance took you away to their beautiful countries — and that emotive reaction works in favour of the airline. On the new Air India identity, nope.
It’s not the agency that did the sacrilegious ‘peeping-tom’ depiction of India as a window, but Air India’s managers and leadership that’s responsible for this — a jaroka with obese letting and gaudy colours.
We saw it coming
Purely going by track record (and the new Air India brand identity) wherever and whenever TATA and SIA have tagged along together there have been disastrous outcomes. For starters, its joint venture airline I refer here had a seven-year loss making streak. We came to know of it only when Singapore Airlines admitted in its filing with the Singapore Stock Exchange of the airline’s disastrous financial performance.
Air India after its takeover by the Tata’s has a super heavy weight top management, a monolith board along with a CEO from New Zealand thrown in for good measure. Surely better sense must have prevailed when closing in on the new brand identity. While the obvious would have been running past all the designs with a select, exclusive and a private group of travellers, pilots, airline execs, and travel traders within closed doors followed by a simple poll or raise of hands on which one works best; it appears to have been bluntly replaced by what I’ve feared all along. The ‘I know it all’, ‘we know how to run an airline’ and the ‘we know what we’re doing’ monologue directive from the management.
Keep it simple
There’s no rocket science to creating an identity for an airline. A livery and logo needs to be simplistic enough for the masses (mostly travellers) to comprehend, understand, relate to and create an affinity with, without any detailed or convoluted mansplaining. A successful airline identity and livery needs to grab your attention in no more than five seconds and stay on as a recall for the longest time possible. Logos, lettering, motifs, emblems, and colours must be designed to capture and hold your attention. This rudimentary, and ‘no-drama’ approach has worked terrifically before — for SWISS, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Japan Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and Emirates.
Made your bed, now lie in it
As airline folk and the common travellers we would have to grin and bear the new Air India livery and brand identity. Last week’s launch event signalled more such hideous and repulsive design extensions would be underway. For starters, the adorable and lovable Maharajah now appears to look a lot more like early 2000’s Malware ‘Bonzi Buddy’ desktop assistant. The TATA-SIA management have crossed the point of no return, and even if they wanted to change the logo now or make iterations, it would be a public humiliation and an admittance of failure.
An airline logo, identity, and livery aren’t things that one needs time to get used to. It’s not as if it’s a new pair of shoes or denim jeans that need to be ‘broken-in-to’. You either love it, or hate it. It’s air transport, travel and about an air transportation system that works by means of a network, with a high level of safety, reliability and quality assurance that backs it — and it’s imperative that it needs to make one feel safe, comfortable, and confident when you take notice of it.
The redesign does not represent India, its culture, its people, and its values. It does not represent what the Tata’s stand for, with providing a safe reliable air transport system. What’s making this worse, is the jingoism that seems to emanate after the Air India rebranding launch
As a proud Indian, the new Air India logo and livery does not represent us. Not even by a billion miles
Air India-SIA, what were you thinking!
(Mark D Martin MRAeS is CEO of Martin Consulting, an aviation consulting firm based in Asia.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. They do not necessarily refect the views of DH.