Aircraft livery
As aircraft liveries evolved in the years after the Second World War, they became a leading subset of the emerging disciplines of corporate identity and branding and among the most prominent examples of fashion.
They have provided an arena for the work of distinguished designers and eminent lay people like Raymond Loewy, Alexander Girard, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The term is an adaptation of the word livery: the uniform-style clothing worn by servants of wealthy families and government representatives until the early/mid-20th century.
At the time, paint was expensive, fairly heavy, had relatively poor adherence to metal, and was prone to early bleaching, mechanical, and chemical damage; leaving the aircraft skin largely unpainted was logical and economical.
Many airframers insisted on overall corrosion protection remaining in place throughout an airliner's service life, or at least throughout its diverse guarantee periods.
This made bare metal liveries problematic; they began giving way to painted exteriors by the mid-1960s.
To ensure longevity, bare metal liveries involved intensive polishing and waxing during manufacture and in service.
The etymology of the term stems from "cheating the eye" because the first cheatlines aimed to streamline aircraft visually by reducing the staccato impact of their cabin windows.
US carriers like the predecessors of United Air Lines and TWA (then Transcontinental and Western Airlines) adopted cheatlines as early as the 1920s.
The popularity of cheatlines declined from the 1970s onwards and today they are comparatively rare, except in aircraft liveries which intentionally seek to induce a retro style, perhaps suggesting long tradition.
In aircraft livery design, a "hockey stick" means a continuation of the cheatline which is rotated through an angle so as to sweep upwards over the tail fin.
The livery was part of a comprehensive corporate identity revamp also involving dedicated airport lounges and including a short-lived "space helmet" headgear for cabin staff.
Related pink and green liveries were designed for group members Scottish and Channel Islands Airways, but never saw service use.
It did so by facilitating the hiring-out (chartering in 1960s parlance or leasing from the 1970s) of individual fleet members during seasonal traffic troughs or economic downturns.
Except for a very brief Air France Pepsi logojet example, all Concorde liveries were predominantly Eurowhite-based, as this reduced heat absorption.
Jellybean liveries involve multiple alternative colourways in which entire aircraft or parts of them are decorated.
Boeing painted a pre-delivery 747-8 to commemorate the Seattle Seahawks' 2014 National Football Conference Championship and appearance in Super Bowl XLVIII.
[7] The livery features the Seahawks logo and a "12" on the tail in reference to the team's fans, who are known collectively as "the 12th man."
added to the aft fuselage, appeared in a flyover of Lake Washington during the Boeing Seafair Air Show in August of that year.
These feeder airlines operate regional jets and other types of smaller utility air-taxi type aircraft, typically painted in ways that mimic (whether through distinctive fonts, colour combinations, or cheatline arrangements) the respective liveries of the operators with which they are affiliated.
This form of camouflage makes use of light and color patterns, and is dependent upon environmental conditions and is mainly effective against human observers, though some electronic visual acquisition systems can be affected.
[12] Note that the stated purpose of this document is to standardize paint schemes and application of naval insignia and markings.
Subsequent camouflage schemes, when used, concentrated on hiding the aircraft from aerial observation while it was resting on or flying near the ground, or they used a light, neutral color to inhibit detection while in the air.
