Fifteen Years of Flying United

In 1996, Pentagram began working on a series of design projects with United Airlines that eventually touched nearly every aspect of the way the company is experienced by their customers. This year, United will consummate a merger with Continental Airlines, and with this change the new combined carrier begins a new chapter. Here’s a look back at the fifteen years that the Pentagram team, led from beginning to end by London partner Daniel Weil and New York partner Michael Bierut, spent working with this amazing company.

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So Long, Ted

We learned yesterday that our longtime client United Airlines was closing down its low cost carrier, Ted. Like so many other airlines, United is consolidating in the face of brutally high fuel costs; integrating its operations in this way will permit substantial savings.

Coming up with the name and design philosophy for Ted in 2004 remains one of our favorite projects. United was looking for a name that would identify their new initiative to offer reduced-fare travel on selected routes in a casual, personal, friendly setting. Naming exercises often can be exhausting and inconclusive. What fun it was instead to discover that a friendly-sounding person had been hiding all along in United’s last three letters.

Pentagram’s work included aircraft liveries, signage, gate environments, and on-board communications, all executed in record time in collaboration with a great team at United. Ted, we’ll miss you.

United Seating Wins ‘Condé Nast Traveller’ Innovation and Design Award

United’s First (top) and Business class (bottom) airline seats recline into completely flat, 180° beds
and are now in service on international flights. Click on the images for enlargements.

United’s new First and Business class cabin environments, developed by Pentagram partner Daniel Weil and B/E Aerospace, have won first prize in the aviation category of the Condé Nast Traveller Innovation and Design Awards 2008.

The United seating was shortlisted for the award by a panel of travel experts and commentators, before being put to the public vote alongside the other finalists. Readers of Condé Nast Traveller voted online for the winners, who also included David Chipperfield in the Culture category for his Museum of Modern Literature in Germany; Ross Lovegrove in the Sustainable category for his Solar Tree street lighting system and Heston Blumenthal in the Gourmet category.

Daniel Weil said of the award: “This is a great opportunity to celebrate the success of the collaboration between United, B/E Aerospace and ourselves. I see this award as the product of a unique combination of talent, expertise and commitment that every member of the team has contributed to.”

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New United Cabin Designs Now Flying

Daniel Weil interviewed for the launch of United Airlines new first and business class cabins. Video courtesy of United.

Daniel Weil’s new cabin designs for United Airlines have begun flying on routes between Washington D.C. and Frankfurt or Zurich in a rollout across 97 international aircraft expected to be finished in the autumn of 2009.

Weil designed the seats in partnership with the in-house design team at B/E Aerospace, the world’s leading aircraft cabin manufacturer. Full details of the new cabins can be found on United’s Suite Dreams minisite.

Previously: United Reveals New Cabin Design

United Reveals New Cabin Design

United Airlines announced a breakthrough yesterday: this fall, they will be the first US carrier to feature fully reclining lie-flat seats in their International First and Business cabins. Pentagram’s Daniel Weil worked with United and a team of specialists throughout the intricate process of designing two new cabins.

“This is the moment where the customer is put first,” said Weil. Designed to provide more space and a better sense of privacy through an innovative forward- and rear-facing design and seats that recline 180˚ to form a six-foot-long bed, the first updated planes will take to the skies later this year. The entire international fleet will be updated in phases over the next two to three years.

The new cabins were designed in conjunction with industry experts B/E Aerospace. Pentagram has been United’s design consultant for nearly ten years, with responsibilities that have ranged from developing the airline’s current livery design, to naming its low-cost carrier Ted, to designing its self-service ticket dispensers, to consulting on tableware and in-flight amenities.