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American Airlines original designer Massimo Vignelli hates its redesign

Jason / Flickr.com

Massimo Vignelli in DC, talks about his DC Metro map design, which he originally did in 1976. Jason / Flickr.com

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Good design is good forever is his contention, and says AA's new design won't last the next 25 years.

-Rafat Ali

Excerpt from BusinessWeek
Jan 20, 2013 4:04 am

Q&A in BusinessWeek with designer Massimo Vignelli, the creator of the American Airlines’ outgoing logo.

What do you think of the redesign?
It has no sense of permanence. The American flag is great…But the American flag has 13 stripes, right? Not 11. Did American add only 11 stripes [to the flag on the tail] because they are in Chapter 11? I don’t think two more stripes would have been a disaster. And there are only two colors shown instead of all three. So is it a different flag?

What about the new logo?
Now they have something other than Helvetica that’s not as good or as powerful. Then they did a funny thing: Some may see an eagle [next to it], some may see something else. And they don’t even say it’s the eagle—they say it could be the eagle.

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  • http://www.jonk.org jonk

    i’m not sure i understand his role and the entirety of what he designed for them, but from the source article it seems like all he did was make type AA and AmericanAirlines in helvetica and make it two-toned. i’m sure there’s more to it (and i’m no designer), but of course something so simple will stand the test of time. that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better — i find the old logo (especially if you take out the eagle) quite soulless. but that’s just me. wordmarks have their place, but there needs to be a twist to them to give them life, like FedEx.

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