Alaska's "New"? Wesbsite

Alaska was blowing up Twitter earlier this week about their Newly Designed website. I was so excited to get home from my trip and check it out on something other than my WackBerry!

Disappointment everywhere.  I wish I had a comparison because I can't remember what the previous site looked like. Folks there is NO visual difference. I was hoping for a something beyond the same-old snoozefest of an airline website.   Remove the "Alaska Airlines" logo at the top and it could be any travel reservation website.

In the spirit of professional constructive criticism here are a few sugestions for the designers over there with Alaska Airlines:

• Incorporate the entire branding scheme on the website. The Eskimo & Logo should be reinforced for the customer.
• Add some color other than blue....please.

To be fair....I'm not a web-designer.  Visuals are my thing- but making the website do what it needs to do is not my area.  I design the visual concept and hand it over to the coders and it's a team effort. But having said that- it doesn't discredit the fact that I yawned and frowned and was just plain unexcited by the hoax of tweets about a "redesigned" website.

Websites are a design challenge- how can we do what everyone else is doing differently. It's a lot of pressure, but when you roll out a website and say it's redesigned- you better make sure its new & exciting.

Alaska, you had a chance and you blew it......And that's my Design in the Sky Review.

Airline Mergers & Branding

When two airlines merge together, I am always interested to see how & if the branding is combined.  Often one airline's identity is wiped away as the stronger takes over. In some cases both logos are combined or a whole new one is created.

United Airlines & Continental Airlines: Used the strong name of United with the strong brand of Continental.

 When the branding was released, I was annoyed. You mean that's what these brilliant minds came up with? All they did was take Continental Airlines' logo and replace the name with United!!

Then I came to the conclusion that in a merger.....it was actually really brilliant.  Both airlines' customers need to get used to the idea of the merged product.  You really can't just create something brand new right away- you have to ease loyal customers into these changes.  Over time, after people are used to there being no more Continental Airlines........they can think about another branding scheme.

Maybe they'll add a color other than the obvious Navy Blue......Is anyone else sick of that color scheme?

Next topic.....Airline Logos A-Z!