Becoming a new American Airlines | Hacker News Reader

Becoming a new American Airlines

dcurt.is

18 pointsjordanbrown30 comments

What does this guy have against American Airlines? As if getting one of their designers fired from his day job [1] wasn't enough.

I personally don't see what is so bad about the new redesign. I guess I just have horrible taste.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6531610/America...

How is the designer responding to Curtis' complaints of his own free will, and then Curtis decrying AA's firing the designer "getting [the designer] fired"?

It isn't. He asked if the guy was OK having his mail published. The guy said yes. Anyone who says Curtis got him fired is saying a lot more about their biases than about anything that happened.

You're conveniently ignoring the fact that he explicitly called for AA's designers to be fired without understanding how a big company operates: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996236

I'm ignoring it because it's a stupid point. AA did not fire anyone because Dustin Curtis is an authority on UX. They fired the guy --- stupidly --- for airing dirty laundry on the blog of someone who just wrote a rant about their UX.

Only on a nerd message board would this be a point that even bore argument. What, are you scared Dustin Curtis is going to get YOU fired next? OOGA BOOGA.

Umm... AA fired the designer, after he wrote back to Dustin Curtis with "an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations."[0]

[0]http://www.dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html

This comment is so facile someone could have written a script to generate it.

I've never seen a major brand complete a redesign without at least a little backlash. People have a natural preference for what's familiar, but in time new brands tend to grow on you.

True, though I think Massimo Vignelli's eagle is a pretty iconic part of the brand and should've been modernized instead of thrown out. Now the brand just looks bland.

You must not be familiar with the history of the American Airlines logo. It's iconic, like the cursive Coca-Cola logo. An evolution would've been better than a complete overhaul.

The same could be said about IBM, UPS or BP, all of which had iconic brands. We now recognize and associate with the new brands, with minimal thought given to what came before.

"Had?" Check out the corner spot on IBM's page, they actually run though all their previous logos, winding up on the iconic one.

http://www.ibm.com/us/en/

> I've never seen a major brand complete a redesign without at least a little backlash. People have a natural preference for what's familiar, but in time new brands tend to grow on you.

OTOH, maybe it's because all the major brand redesigns you've seen have been complete crap... This wouldn't be particularly surprising, because many modern corporate redesigns seem to be best described as risk averse pandering to fads (on the part of both the designers and upper management). As another comment put it, they tend to be very bland.

[Of course in reality, it's probably a combination of the two reasons: many such redesigns are very poorly done, but even the ones that are decent risk backlash due to changing something that's familiar.]

If you future may require another taxpayer bailout, best to drape your identity even more in the flag, to raise the emotional stakes in your favor.

I always thought it was un-American how bad American Airlines was. As a country we should prohibit them from using our name...

Honestly none of the US legacy carriers are very good. Southwest, Alaska, and Virgin America are really the only US flagged airlines I'd fly, given a choice.

Hi, I am Dustin Curtis. I just throw vacuous statements around something to sound profound and edgy.

Markov Dustin Curtis hater strikes again!

I actually like the "flag" on the tail... it's bold and I think a nice abstraction of a flag; I like the way it completely fills the tail and doesn't use gradients (the most annoying of modern airline logo fads..."hey guys... we can do shading now... go wwwwwild!1!").

The rest of the new design is complete crap, of course ("bluh" is a good description, I think), especially that they got rid of the eagle, which was bold, iconic, and managed to combined modernity with a sort of 1930s vibe (i.e., "classic"). Other than the flag, the new design just reeks of risk-averse 1980s corporate mediocrity.

American has been dead to me ever since they got rid of their 'more room throughout coach' tagline. As a taller guy (though not _that_ tall), it basically pushed me to United and their Economy Plus seating, which I love and happily pay a little extra for.

I mean, it's not as nice as, say, SAS's normal economy class, but for a US carrier, it's as good as I've gotten without flying business/first.

It reminds me of older Greyhound bus logos. I guess if you're trying to make people think you're a bus line in the sky, that's a good thing.

For some reason, I never liked the American Airlines logo. Sure, it's historic, but it always felt too corporate and stiff to me. A big part of what I disliked about it was the colours. Overall, I think the new one is better looking, however I understand why some designers despise this change.

As a foreigner I just look at the new design and cannot help but agree with the overly patriotic pig lipstick comment at the end of the article.

It is almost like the designers were asked to "Remake the brand in a more 'America, Fuck yeah!' manner, that is trendy right? It will get people to identify with us patriotically and forget out infamous service"

At first, I hated it, but looking at the linked article, it's not terrible. I prefer the iconic logo, but they could have done a lot worse with this rebranding. It feels fresh and modern, rare for an airliner.

http://www.aa.com/newamerican

I like the livery (unlike Curtis, who calls it "patriotic lipstick" but ignores the positioning statement it makes, or the fact that the new livery is much more easily identifiable than the old one, which just set the logo on the tail and gave the planes racing stripes).

I hate the new logo.

I don't have anything against the redesign. The one element of their branding that I love (unpainted aluminum) remained, which makes up for anything else. I do kind of miss the "AA" part, though, but the flag and eagle are nice too.

I like the new design, to be honest, I think it looks pretty great. On the other hand, I like the existing logoscript better, and I find the flag-on-the-tail placement, to be just plain tacky.

We gotta do some soul searching if this is hitting the HN frontpage.

Why, because Kennedy's secret plan to stage false-flag military attacks on gulf coast cities is germane, but graphic design isn't?

My thoughts:

a) Assuming the link you mention was low quality, that doesn't justify low quality here.

b) Interface design has a broad appeal, it involves reasoning about utility and aspects of the human experience we all have access to, but often overlook, like biases and perception. Graphic design involves subtler distinctions in a subset of the above.

c) I enjoy visually understanding concepts and making comparisons. I like when designers take an opportunity to represent their personal taste. Standing up for your taste involves personality, your ability to put yourself in context, and some vulnerability. That is real to me. This article contained none of that depth-- only two words in the stub-- "corporate lipstick" referenced the new design.

Whats your take on it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com