Felling nostalgic – These old photos beautifully encapsulate the rise and glamour of Pan Am

In the 1960s Pan Am conquered the skies and shrank the globe. The name Pan Am was to the world of aviation what Cartier is to the world of fine jewelry. Needless to say, it was the most glamorous airline and if you flew with Pan Am you were considered elite. So what made the airline tick? Pan Am’s success was largely due to its visionary founder Juan Trippe, who transformed a small mail carrier into a global airline, pioneered flights for the masses, and helped create the Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

But the one thing that makes Pan Am continue to be a name in the aviation industry despite closing its doors many years ago was the airline branding. Juan Trippe worried as much about the look of his airline as filling seats and it was he who pioneered the concept of consistent visual identity. He insisted that every asset from brochures to tickets, employee uniforms to the terminal waiting area should look part of a whole, and leave the impression of a sleek, confident company. The Pan Am identity of the sky-blue globe and windswept Pan Am logotype found their way onto everything from luggage tags to tickets to the jets themselves. It was this fundamental part of branding that they got right because it tapped into their consumers’ psychology. Simply put, Pan Am’s branding was decades ahead of its time.

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Pan Am: History, Design & Identity, author Matthias Hühne recounts in his new book the development of Pan Am’s visual identity and reproduces some of its most powerful brand assets in his 432-page volume. Here’s a look at some of the pictures from his book.

[Via – Adweek]

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