Being the designer and protector of an airline's design system from day one was incredible. I wanted to stay in London for a few more years, the company wanted to consolidate in Norway and so the chapter as closed with great memories.
When designing a livery for a low-cost airline, you need to consider the lifetime costs involved.
If you colour the nose cone, you should better have a spare in that colour, or risk expensive delays. The reason we see so many white aircraft, is because 'Boeing White' is the standard paint used for parts, and so they are in immediate and cheaper supply.
For safer and quicker aircraft inspections, hatches and doors should be bordered with contrasting colours. Interestingly, due to the Dreamliner's unique composite fuselage material, special paint is required, which limits the colours and application techniques available.
With all of this in mind, we limited ourselves to 4 colours that would portray both value and comfort. You don't want customers thinking you spent all their money on a nice paint scheme, but you don't want them to dread the idea of 12 hours onboard.
While ideating the longship concept, it was really exciting to have a logo that would blend seamlessly across digital mediums to the actual aircraft. The logo was fluid, yet simplistic enough to be effective in both.
Explaining why I was receiving large aircraft grade metal colour swatches to my housemates was interesting.
The following colour scheme was inspired by the icebergs Viking explorers would have passed during their voyages. The softer colours compared to traditional low cost carriers provided the necessary feeling of elegance.
Given Norse is a low-cost airline, there was limited ability to rebrand the aircraft's interior. As such, it was key to customise as many touch points as possible to the fledgling Norse brand. I'm proud of this simplistic, unique and artistic safety card we delivered.
This is a greatly scrutinised piece of work, which should be understood quickly, readable in low light and without language barriers. This is a key part of receiving an AOC (Air Operator's Certificate), and ours design was approved immediately (which is rare), preventing expensive delays.
(Illustrations by Wow-How Studios who did an amazing job, I was just the project manager).
I loved this concept during development and I think being more adventurous with our typography would have helped brand differentiation. The logo and typography worked seamlessly together.
Introducing: Ratatoskr, named after the mythological squirrel that carried messages for the gods up and down the world tree. Designed using the swirl from the livery, and the runic R's in the typeface. It was our weekly newsletter to keep our rapidly growing company all on the same page.
After launching a website, it takes about 6 months for SEO efforts to reap rewards. Given the plan was to start ticket sales within a year, it was paramount to get a website properly set up, even before we had a technology team setup. We hadn't revealed or even finished our branding yet so this was pretty plain.
Most airlines, especially in the US, are huge corporate behemoths that shy away from making content that people are actually interested in. They play it safe, and safe isn't compelling on a small handheld device. The strategy was to take inspiration from Ryanair's be the funny airline of long haul and US markets. When decision makers are nervous about taking such an angle, having a tried and tested case study helps align everyone.
Content creation
Norse is a publicly traded company, so we were legally obliged to publish financial reports every quarter. "Markus, our reports just got approved by the board. Can you publish our first annual reports by the end of the week" said our CFO, sure I can.
Annual report designTourists and business travellers alike bring a lot of value to communities. Tourism boards provide marketing funds, field days and subsidies to airlines to help bring traffic to their region. It's great value for money and my job was to find and procure these funds. With this role, I built partnerships with Los Angeles, Florida, New York, Oslo and London, and supported partnerships with the local airports.
Now with a marketing and technical team (population: 4), we could build our revenue generating website alongside LUX Interactive. My job was to be Norse's design and user experience manager, collaborating with Navitaire on our tight deadline.
I'm particularly proud of this unique flight selection page, where upselling to Premium Economy was key, without adding friction. It allowed guests to quickly discover that they could fly Premium for a similar price to economy if they just flew another day.
