Korean Air replaced its iconic logo for the first time in 40 years

For the first time since 1984, the airline Korean Air is updating its charmingly retro look to new branding that’s better suited for the modern era.

The rebrand, designed by the global creative consultancy Lippincott, includes a new wordmark, refreshed logo, and pared-down color scheme. It’s set to debut across Korean Air’s operations and on the livery of its aircraft in the coming weeks. The rebrand comes just a few months after Korean Air officially completed merger negotiations with Asiana Airlines, South Korea’s second-largest airline. The two companies will become one mega-airline.

[Image: Korean Air]

As Korean Air begins to integrate Asiana Airlines’ operations with its own, Asiana Airlines’s brand identity will be slowly phased out. And, as part of the merger, Korean Air is likely to add new destinations to its offerings, expanding its international profile. Korean Air’s new look is meant to differentiate this upcoming phase of it’s 55-year history as it becomes an increasingly global brand.

[Image: Korean Air]

Reimagining an ‘iconic’ brand

Korean Air’s former branding had a distinctly ’80s aesthetic, including a stylized, chunky wordmark and vibrant color palette of sky blue, cerulean, and red. The company’s planes have reflected this branding for decades through a distinct blue livery. Dan Vasconcelos, a partner at Lippincott, says that the ’80s branding is “iconic,” adding that “it’s not every day that you get to evolve brand assets that have been untouched for over 40 years.”

[Image: Korean Air]

As the first step of this major undertaking, his team decided to tackle the brand’s logo. Since its 1984 refresh, Korean Air’s logo has been a red, white, and blue interpretation of the Taeguk, the symbol at the center of the South Korean flag which represents balance in nature. Vasconcelos says the team tested hundreds of potential new versions of the Taeguk symbol. Ultimately, they landed on a fluid, ribbon-like iteration, rendered in one seamless blue stroke. The design is inspired by Sangmo Nori, a traditional Korean performance art.

“[Sangmo Nori] involves performers wearing sangmo, a hat with a long ribbon attached to it, which they spin and twirl in intricate patterns while dancing energetically,” Vasconcelos says. “It represents abundance, prosperity, and joy. We felt that the ribbon in the tradition carried great symbolism: it’s universally recognized for its elegance while being resonant in Korea.”

[Image: Korean Air]

The Taeguk’s tapered edges also reference traditional calligraphy, a reference the Lippincott team brought into the rebrand’s custom typeface as well. Type studios Dalton Maag and Sandoll designed the bespoke font, which is a modern, all-caps sans serif featuring small calligraphic flourishes. It’s designed for optimal legibility in both English and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). The font is also the basis of Korean Air’s new wordmark and all other copy across its branding.

[Image: Korean Air]

A simplified color palette that reads ‘premium’

To give Korean Air a more luxury feel, Lippincott has simplified the brand’s color palette to a core range of blues, cutting out the former red accents. 

“Doubling down on the blue allowed us to be more single-minded and confident, a trait of premium brands,” Vasconcelos says. “Think of Hermes, Louis Vuitton, or Tiffany—they are bold in their use of color but do it with simplicity and flair.” 

[Image: Korean Air]

In keeping with the brand’s tradition, Vasconcelos’s team decided to buck the white livery trend used by most national trends and stick with Korean Air’s blue fuselage. During the research process, he says, the blue livery was a particularly memorable brand asset for customers.

[Image: Korean Air]

Other elements of the livery have been tweaked to align with the company’s plans to expand: The word Air has been removed from the livery to project Korean Air’s standing as South Korea’s largest airline, and the brand’s Hangul name has also been removed with global audiences in mind.

[Image: Korean Air]

“My client Kenny Chang [SVP and CMO of Korean Air] sums it up well by saying that the vision for Korean Air is to be a global airline which happens to be based in Korea,” Vasconcelos says. “This helped inform key design decisions such as removing the airline’s Hangul name from the livery as well as designing a symbol that, while infused by national iconography, isn’t too similar to the national flag.”

Korean Air’s streamlined rebrand is both elegant and logical, given the company’s growing ambitions. Still, time will tell if the brand will have the staying power of its former visual identity, which resonated strongly with the airline’s audience for more than 40 years.

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