Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975

A super stylish journey: The ultimate sourcebook for the best airline graphic design

Arguably no other book has been produced with such technical sophistication in recent years and few design books have received such an overwhelming worldwide media resonance. Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975 rounds up the most imaginative, influential and surprising designs of the airlines' commercial art from the “golden age of flying.” It provides an unprecedented, systematic outline of the development of the visual identities of thirteen pioneering airlines, combining innovative research and stunning, museum-like presentations of hundreds of spectacular aviation posters, photos and other illustrations.

Conceived by some of the world's top creative minds, such as Ivan Chermayeff, Otl Aicher, Massimo Vignelli, Academy Award winner Saul Bass, or advertising titan Mary Wells Lawrence, the designs found in the book's case studies also illustrate the shift from traditional methods of corporate design and advertising to comprehensive modern branding programs which took place in the same period.

To reproduce all of the images as precisely as possible, a total of seventeen different colors, five different varnishes, and two different methods of foil printing and embossing were used. The result is a book of exceptional vivacity that pushes the limits of modern art printing technology. The Premium Edition has received glowing reviews in leading media around the world, including The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, New Republic, Slate, Adweek, and dozens of others in the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Spain, Italy, Norway, and many other countries.

Created by internationally recognized art book publisher Callisto and designed by distinguished Berlin-based designer Yvonne Quirmbach, the volume was produced in a renowned printing facility in northern Italy on deluxe 200g Fedrigoni paper.

The Premium Edition is also available as a Collector's Edition, limited to 999 copies and presented in a grand clamshell case designed by Yvonne Quirmbach, with a metal cover similar in appearance to the aluminum alloy used to manufacture jet aircraft in the 1960s. (See ISBN 9783981655025.)