Alaska Airlines

The digital and experiential side of the Alaska rebrand, tested in many places at once.

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Digital, Brand
An Alaska Airlines jet in the new livery, white with a navy tail and the face on the tail, flying above a layer of white clouds under a deep blue sky.
Client
Alaska Airlines
Agency
Hornall Anderson
My role
Led the digital and experiential vision on the agency team
With
Strategists, brand designers, and experience experts

The rebrand was meant to take Alaska Airlines from a Pacific Northwest carrier to a national one.

Situation

The new brand had to hold up in every digital and physical place a traveler met Alaska.

It also had to outlast us. Alaska's own teams would be the ones living with it into the future.

A flat lay of rebrand pieces on white paper: a striped scarf, bag tags, a Beyond magazine cover with the tail face, a tablet and a phone, Mileage Plan cards, a menu, a snack box, a jet in flight, and airport check-in signage.
The wider rebrand: bag tags, menus, cards, and signs at the airport.

My role

I led the digital and experiential vision on the Hornall Anderson team behind the rebrand. I worked alongside strategists, brand designers, and experience experts.

I audited every place Alaska showed up, from rentable onboard tablets to the website and the app. I also worked on the Virgin America integration.

Alaska web pages fanned out around a tablet on a teal background: a Welcome page with the tail face in the clouds, a page introducing the face on the tail, and a page of customer posts.
Web pages in the new look: a welcome page, the face on the tail, and customer posts.

The hard decision

The hardest part was change management. Alaska's teams would have to live with these design frameworks and ideas, and keep building on them.

We built aspirational examples meant to be handed over to those teams, along with the framework behind them, so they could take them and build on them.

Three phones showing the Alaska app: a navy launch screen with the logo, a home screen reading Good morning, William with three blue buttons, and a Book a trip form with a green Find flights button.
The app: a launch screen, a morning greeting, and the booking form.

What we made

I built a flexible system and proofs of concept that put the new brand to work across many touchpoints at once. The internal idea behind it was "We Get You."

Some of it shipped finished, like the printed signage and cards. We also shipped screens and workflows, from booking flows to in-flight entertainment.

After the merger with Virgin America, the booking flow had more room to become simpler.

A tablet showing an Available flights page from Seattle to New York, with a row of dates and prices above a list of flights and fare boxes for coach and first.
The purchase funnel. Picking a flight, with fares by date and cabin.
Four seat map studies on white cards: a concept matrix, a legend for First, Premium Class, Preferred Plus, Main Cabin and your seat, a Premium Class symbol study, and an unavailable seat study.
Seat map studies. A symbol for each cabin, your seat, and seats you can't take.

What changed

I worked closely with Alaska's internal teams so they could understand the direction, take the examples and their framework, and build on them.

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