‘Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975’ explores designs and ad methods of world’s greatest airlines

Callisto Publishers releases a series of concise and well-researched case studies focusing on selected time segments in the corporate design histories of the world’s greatest airlines in the book Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975, which contains unique insight into advertising methods of an era when airlines were considered the most glamorous business sector. The book narrates about best creative minds of the time—designers like Ivan Chermayeff, Otl Aicher, Massimo Vignelli or Academy Award winner Saul Bass, as well as advertising luminaries like Mary Wells Lawrence.

Author of the book MC Hühne illustrates the shift from traditional methods of corporate designs and advertisement to comprehensive modern identity programmes that were generally introduced in the 1960s and early 1970s. Among others he portrays airlines such as Pan Am, American Airlines, Lufthansa and Air France. This splendid work of art contains a sequence of carefully selected images with a focus on printed materials. To reproduce all originals as precisely as possible, a total of seventeen different colours, five different types of varnishes, and two different methods of foil printing and embossing were used, resulting in a book of exceptional vivacity that highlights the state of the art of today’s printing technology.