Sigh. After much fanfare, Aer Lingus has finally revealed its new brand, which is basically reinventing the shamrock. The core essence of the brand hasn’t changed, apart from a simple refresh and modernisaiton of the typeface and an adaptation of the Shamrock, which is now made up of hearts with a sense of motion brought in too.
The refreshed brand with updated logo and new aircraft livery is supposed to reflect the airline’s position as a modern and contemporary Irish brand that competes on the international stage. The new brand identity supports Aer Lingus’ ambition to be the leading ‘value carrier’ across the North Atlantic. It’s an interesting brand positioning, something adopted by the likes of Brussels Airlines who fits somewhere between legacy and low cost.
Right, that’s all quite understandable, however, how a livery actually translates this is actually quite difficult and seemingly much harder than was explained in the big reveal. The end result by Lippincott has a very familiar feel to it. Somewhere between an Iberia and Qantas livery. however even both of those have powerful logotypes that help offset the rest of the Eurowhite design – and we feel the Qantas livery is actually quite smart. We don’t blame Lippincott for the end result, considering there were 50 iterations that were considered, which suggest a design-by-committee approach.
We were told at the great reveal the design basics to livery design that big type and mass of colour is the symbolisation of low cost, while an absence of colour and smaller types positions a carrier as premium. In fact, we’ve covered this in simplistic terms various times on the site. Small and Eurowhite apparently good. Bold colour and large typeface; bad.
However, it’s this simplistic approach that has left the end result somewhat underwhelming. A logotype that’s too small, a large white fuselage, that makes the final product look like a leased-in aircraft and reminds us of the 767’s the airline leased from Omni Air International a few years ago.
With so much heritage in Ireland to draw from, a memorable and iconic existing livery, and an opportunity to reimagine the product, has left us feeling, well, a little flat. Yes, there are synergies within the rest of the IAG portfolio, like Level and Iberia featuring similar ‘tail-heavy’ liveries, but Aer Lingus offers the IAG group the opportunity to bring levity, life, culture and the opportunity to create a boutique brand with a halo effect for the rest of the group. It’s a shame, because an airline with such a great, cost effective product, really deserves more.
TheDesignAir 
Very disappointing, sad to see another iconic livery being washed away by a cold corporate, impersonal approach, soul is gone….
Spot on, Jonny!
i like it. Other one was looking ancient. Maybe they could have gone with an off-white like Alitalia. Too many people are stuck in the past. The old livery green, yes, green is in the flag, but that was too much; IMO
Enough with this unimagined, uninspired trend of white fuselage with coloredonly tail. I get it that a white fuselage may be more cost effective from a material, labor and operations issue…but it so sooo bland! how much of an economic benefit is it, really? a boring white fuselage?… not to mention, with only a tail left to design – this tail (like others… i’m speaking to you Iberia, Avianca etc)… this design and others really represent a dumbing down of the brand and lost opportunity to inspire and create focus and attraction to the brand, aircraft and airline.
Granted there are some carriers that have more of history of a uniform white(ish) fuselage that are brand icons such as British, Swiss…even Lufthansa… that their versions are (in my opinion) acceptable.
Airlines that opt to radically (i’ll say it again) “dumb down” their livery suffer a cheapening of their brand that likely ripples through their entire service…..
It’s just AWFUL.