The foundation of this project is typography, and I knew that I wanted to create something really striking. I was inspired by the thought of mashing together historical design with something midcentury and a little bit international, so lots of blackletter, monolines, and sans serif goodies.There's so much passion and power in type, and I always find myself inspired by all of the eccentricities.

In terms of graphic styles, inspiration dragged over from typography to combine more ornate and historical references with something clean and streamlined. I was combing through web pages documenting the animal style patterning found in Medieval-era illuminated manuscripts, and I was really interested to see how that influence has evolved in such simplistic ways— without losing the grip on the detail and poise of it all.  

With colors, I leaned really heavily into a midcentury palette because... it's just a thing of beauty. The way that these palettes simultaneously are so muted yet so lively is just incredible to me. I knew it would lend itself wonderfully to this project as a way to root everything in this classic period of history.

This project is completely rooted in history. My main inspiration was taking influences from Medieval patterning and ephemera and mashing it together with the very geometric, nostalgic, universal era of graphic design from the 1940s-60s. They don't really seem like they go together, but putting all the visuals together in one spread lit my brain up to run in a million directions (which you'll see very soon if you keep scrolling).

When I began this project, my first goal was to nail down the word I wanted to base everything around. After some research (and some cloud-based bias) I was intrigued by the word Nimbus. In daily life, nimbus clouds are just those big fellas that signal an approaching storm. In lore, it's a term used to describe the halo that may hover over a spirit or other supernatural being. It's just perfect. At this point I didn't really know what the hell I wanted to do with it, so I just started doodling up some letters to see where it would take me. Pulling inspiration from my type research, I was trying to make forms with blackletter influence of a Medieval era, while still being clean enough to fit in something a bit more streamlined.

The final word art, rooted in a form of historically relevant blackletter in a manner that coexists nicely with the landscape of the aviation golden age.

The wordmark is accompanied by an array of supporting graphics, principal of which being the monogram.

Patterning graphics hearken to animal style graphics of the Middle Ages— with a contemporary spin.

For all the spirits that can't just toss their luggage into a magical void, the pattern lives beautifully across an array of travel bag options...

... travel-focused, or just for something a bit more casual.

The branding elements also extend to graphics on the actual jetliners to give an ethereal distinction in the skies.

Tickets that remind passengers— mortal or not— of the special journey they have ahead of them.

aaaaaaand a presentation board to bring it altogether. The beauty of a magic airliner— hidden in plane sight.

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