Delta Air Lines

New:  Logo refinements, and livery

Launched:  April 30, 2007

Story in brief:
This is the classic instance of a rebranding that consolidates, not merely signals, a successful turnaround. What better than to unveil new branding on the occasion of official recovery from bankruptcy, less than an hour before the closed-circuit unveiling of a newly painted Boeing 777.

Not far from the plane's new logo was a painted thank you message from employees to CEO Grinstein, who in turn made it clear that sacrifices and stubborn determination of employees had made survival, recovery, and the defeat of a hostile acquirer possible. Their reward includes a distribution of $480 million in cash and options (which helps put the reported $10 million cost of rebranding in perspective.) But their richer reward is today's "winning team" victory lap.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Gerald Grinstein
Identity design - Lippincott Mercer

First Impressions:
Good Job! Nice ideas include... to go all red in the symbol (does a world citizen want to be quite so red, white and blue?), to add life and dimension with a second tone of red, and to point the delta forward on the tail display. And I like the clean confidence of all cap letterforms, as much as I disliked the fat school-bookish letterforms they replace. (Is there new hope for Modern? Is Post-Modern starting to look simply Post, as it does here?)

Other Comments:
The instant of the unveiling, Delta posted rebranding links on its News home page. You'll enjoy the Delta Logo History link.