The Allplane Podcast #63: designing an airline livery, with Edmond Huot

Think of an aircraft as a blank, giant, 3D canvas, a space for creative expression…

The livery is an essential part of any airline’s branding, in fact you may be able to argue what comes first, whether the livery or the corporate branding…this is one of the aspects of airline livery design that we discuss with our guest today.

Edmond Huot is Chief Creative Officer at Allforward, a media and marketing agency based in New York City. He’s been in charge of the branding and livery design for Northern Pacific Airways, a newly created airline that aims to connect the contiguous US with Asia by way of Alaska.

Edmond gives as a glimpse of what the process to define a new airline brand from scratch looks like: how does it start? how many iterations are needed before you come up with an identity that resonates? how do you translate your drawings into an actual 160ft-long plane?

And last but not least: which are, according to him, the coolest airline liveries of all time?

Tune in for this week’s episode of the podcast!

Download this episode from:

Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher

Things we talk about in this episode:

  • Edmond’s creative work at Forward Media

  • What matters in an airline brand and livery

  • What are the steps involved in designing a new livery from scratch

  • How did the Northern Pacific Airways livery come about?

  • How the colour palette defines (or not) the airline brand?

  • Which the are the best airline liveries of all time?

Resources

Forward Media

Northern Pacific Airways

My piece about the unveiling of the Northern Pacific Airways livery

My piece for CNN about the aircraft-painting industry

A piece I did for The Points Guy about livery design, featuring Edmond as well

Island Air, the Hawaiian airline Edmond worked with

Some of the airline livery designs that Edmond likes:

Current liveries:

Historical liveries:

A couple of pics of the Northern Pacific Airways livery that we repeatedly refer to in our conversation:

Interview Transcript

(please note that, although we strive to make it as close as possible to the original recording, the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

Coming soon…

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