Here's what's changing in Alaska Airlines' new look

Alaska Airlines revealed its new look on Monday, in what the company calls, giving the best experience to flyers.

At first glance, it may not look like much has changed in Alaska Airlines' new look, but here's what is changing, the airline wrote on its blog:

“The two biggest changes to Alaska’s visual identity are in the bold new design of its name (or wordmark), and the iconic Eskimo that has graced the tails of its planes since the early 1970s.

“To the uninitiated, the updated wordmark may seem like a simple matter of font choice, but to Woerner’s team every stroke conveys something critical about the brand.

“’The clean lines and italics of our updated wordmark represent the performance and precision our customers have come to expect when they fly Alaska, from our pioneering 20-minute baggage guarantee to our industry leading on-time performance,’ said Woerner.

“It was also important to the company to keep some equity from the wordmark that Alaska’s customers have come to know. The capital ‘A’ in Alaska has been streamlined, but is otherwise very similar to earlier versions.

“’It was a balance between taking what makes us who we are, and finding a way to modernize it with energy, life and confidence.’

“To update the face on the tail, an icon so beloved that rumors in the late 1980s of a new logoinspired a “Don’t Touch the Eskimo,” resolution in the state of Alaska, the work started years ago.

“In 2013, the marketing team traveled to the airline’s namesake state to interview native artists. Their goal: modernize the Eskimo, while paying respect to all that he represents to the company and its people.

“He’s a great ambassador,” said Perry Eaton, an Alutiiq artist consulted for the project. “I see that logo and that image as being extremely important as an ambassador for the indigenous people of Alaska. It’s a touchstone.”

“’One new challenge unique to the digital age: the Eskimo of the 1990s was too detailed to render well online and on mobile devices. The team smoothed and simplified his features and expanded his ruff to include pops of color. They gave the colors descriptive names to denote the places Alaska flies and the feelings the colors should evoke: “tropical green” for Hawai’i and Costa Rica and Alaska’s many international Mileage Plan destinations, and a palate of soothing blues: “breeze, midnight, atlas and calm.’

‘‘Our goal was to bring more energy to the brand, so we brought color that represents the places we fly and our home here in the Pacific Northwest,” said Woerner. “We’re a brand that’s all about brightening your day, so we added some complimentary blues and green to reflect that in our outward appearance.”

Customers will see vibrant new colors in the fur-lining of the updated Eskimo’s parka, as well as in airports, onboard flights and online.

“‘[The changes are] subtle,” said Alutiiq artist Alvin Amason, who shares a studio with Eaton and was also consulted by Alaska Airlines. “You haven’t revamped it – you’ve made it ‘today’.”

In focus groups before the brand updates, fliers unfamiliar with Alaska described its look as “corporate, functional and a bit cold.” The simple changes of streamlining the “icicle font” in the wordmark and adding green began to dramatically change people’s first impressions of the brand.

“This sets us up for future growth,” Woerner said. “We’re a fiercely independent company, and we’re updating our brand to take us into the future.’

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Cox Media Group