Sunday, April 8, 2018

Dan-Air Diaries: Airline Identity & Visual Language

In order to gain inspiration from and to identify the visual language used by Dan-Air, I explored a range of materials published by the air-line from the time period during which Julia Burton worked as an air-stewardess (1984-1992).

These materials included ‘Flightline,’ the airline’s bi-monthly staff newsletter, and ‘InFlight,’ which as the name suggests, was Dan-Air’s in-flight magazine.






As a result of the airline no longer being active, and due to the long period of time which has passed since the cessation of operations, there is very limited information to be found regarding the airline’s identity and printed collateral.

The Dan-Air logo is presumed to be a custom typographic treatment. It is notably sans-serif, italicised and features strong contrast in weight of stroke. Additionally, the dash (-) in-between the two words presents itself as a small glyph of a plane, representing the company’s service as an airline.

Throughout its time in service, Dan-Air explored a range of typographic and layout/compositional styles in ‘Flightline’ and ‘In Flight,’ predominantly serif and slab-serif in classification (in contrast to the Dan-Air word mark), as well as more bespoke, hand-rendered treatments, all  typical of the time.

Dan-Air used a consistent colour scheme throughout its life time, for everything from its word mark, printed collateral and staff uniform etc. A scheme of blue, red and white almost certainly used in representation and celebration of the airline being a British, UK founded and based company. There is not much consistency when it comes to the use of specific tones of the colours featured in the airline’s printed matter, though are most typically mid shades, bold and vibrant. The airline’s print regularly featured a double-line of combinations of these colours.


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