The above is the joke slogan for Northwest Airlines that one of my journalism professors, Father Whalen (a.k.a. Padre, or the Duke) tossed off in class one day while discussing Northwest's dominance over the Twin Cities market. It's stuck with me ever since.
MSP isn't my home airport these days (Viva Seattle, Viva SeaTac), so I'm no longer under NWA's thumb (straight outta Bloomington...).
But I still liked Northwest's old logo, which is one of the ones mourned in this great Salon Ask the Pilot article about airline liveries, and how so many are changing for the worst. Says Salon of the old NWA logo: "Unveiled in 1989, this was the brainchild of Landor Associates, one of the industry's most powerful identity overhaulers. The mark is genius: It's an N, it's a W, it's a compass pointing toward the northwest. It was all of those things at once, and boldly handsome to boot."
And of the new one: "Landor's brilliant NW has been bastardized into a lazy, meaningless circle. Compared to the one it replaces, this new device is so brutally reductive that it's almost painful to gaze upon. "
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4 comments:
The revealing part is that the logo, dating to 1989, is actually way NEWER than some of the NWA fleet.
Nothing more fun than flying a DC-9!!
As a graphic artist, I cringe when I see bad logos... because I know that someone somewhere got tens of thousands of dollars to build it. I feel like pointing them to this site: www.baddesignkills.com
A bit of graffiti seen in the Detroit airport:
NWA - Nimrods With Airplanes.
Are they changing the name to "10:45 Air" too?
I liked the old old name - Northwest Orient Airline....the world is going our waaay!
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