Hi friends!
China Eastern Airlines is one of the biggest Chinese airlines with a great service and very beautiful flight attendants. China Eastern Airlines also has a nice logo that represents a flying swallow. But in our opinion, there are a few problems, which we are going to analyze and fix in this article in order to help China Eastern Airlines be more attractive and successful.
DISCLAIMER: This redesign is made with educational and experimental purposes, to demonstrate our approach with concrete examples and help those brands we took as references, but in no way to offend, mock or troll them. It’s important to be constructive and positive, not destructive and negative. All the pictures are just hand drawn rough sketches in order to express the design direction. Please keep that in mind.
LET’S ANALYZE THE EXISTING LOGO.
1. The logo looks to the opposite direction of the text. Both Chinese and English text are written from left to right, but the bird is oriented in the opposite direction.
From a global standpoint, the swallow is oriented to the past and not to the future. In most of the world the direction to the right symbolizes the future, the direction to the left symbolizes the past. Before in China people wrote from right to left, but now they write from left to right. China Eastern Airlines is a company, which operates in the international arena that is why, in our opinion, the logo is better when it’s oriented to the right. In this case it is better perceived globally.
2. The tail’s inner curve ellipse is oriented downwards. Despite the fact that the ellipse doesn’t fully fit into the tail, anyway it displays the situation.
3. The wing’s inner curve ellipse is also oriented downwards.
4. The tail is above the head. It creates an additional downward oriented movement.
5. The negative space between the top part of the tail (blue) and the top wing (red) forms an invisible arrow (yellow) which strongly points down. It is at least 2 times bigger than the same negative area (green) at the bottom, which points upward.
All the elements mentioned in points 2, 3, 4 and 5 form a downward oriented direction. Not horizontal, not upward, but downward direction, which shouldn’t be used for an airline company and actually for any business because it symbolizes descending and decline.
6. The top and bottom tips of the tail are not aligned with the tip of the red lower wing. It creates a feeling of a disorganized and unbalanced construction. The human brain naturally seeks harmony and balance, this way it spends less energy on the recognition and information processing.
7. The marked area of the lower wing is exaggerated with the gradient, which takes attention from the head of the swallow.
8. Points 1, 2 and 3 are at the different levels. Pay special attention to the points 2 and 3, they are extremum points of the inner and outer curves of the tail.
LET’S FIX IT.
1. Let’s flip the logo and orient it to the right. This way it will be oriented to the future from a global standpoint.
2.1 Before changing the position of the tail, we are going to change its shape in order to harmonize it by matching the elliptical axes of inner and outer curves.
2.2 Let’s fix the direction of the tail and orient its inner ellipse (green) upward, making the upper border of the tail’s top part become almost horizontal. Compare it with the black line. Notice that we move the whole tail, that is why all the elements around change too. You will see these changes in the further steps.
3.1 Let’s balance the ellipse of the wings (red) and make it horizontal in order to achieve a look, which will express the stability of flight and the development of the business. We will do it by changing the inner curve of the wings. In the picture 7 you will see the overlapping of the logos before and after, and understand the difference.
3.2 Let’s align the top part of the tail to the head. In order to achieve this, we have to lift the head up. By making this step, we create a straight, forward oriented horizontal movement, which expresses the stability and prosperous future of China Eastern Airlines.
3.3 The illustration shows the shape of the wings before and after the changes.
4. We harmonized the negative space between the wings and the tail and created the uplifting movement of the whole construction.
5. Let’s align the tips of the tail with the lower wing's tip. In order to achieve this we are going to extend the upper part of the tail and shorten the lower wing a bit.
6. We also changed the outer curve of the lower wing in order to create an additional uplifting movement that leads our eyes to the head. In this picture you can see the whole change of the shape of the logos before in after.
7. By making all the previous steps we aligned the extremum points of the tail curves (blue) with the swallow’s head. That is why we created a united direction of movement. In the previous version there are two vectors of motion. Obviously not a good idea in terms of flying.
8. Let’s get rid of the gradients because in this case it looks not modern. And make the colors more energetic and bright.
9. We achieved balance and harmony of the whole construction. From the first glance, this might look too complicated for those who never payed attention to such details. But our lives consist of such small and often invisible details that determine our present and future, so it is very important to recognize them and understand. Flying up or down – it’s up to you, but remember that a human should always strive up.
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