Fly Level SL is an airline brand that belongs to the International Airlines Group. Airline companies that are part of IAG use the Level brand for their low-cost flights. While the company’s base is Barcelona–El Prat Airport, it has a registered office in Madrid, Spain.
At first glance, the Level logo resembles a flag. It may leave you wondering why on earth an airline chose such an emblem. And yet, the visual brand identity seems to be part of a carefully thought-out formula.
One of the main reasons why the International Airlines Group decided to create Level was that it wanted to counteract the growing rivalry within the low-cost long-haul market. The brand was announced in March 2017. The logo was unveiled the same month. In June, the airline already started its flights.
The logo and identity design was developed by Brand Union, which is a global brand and design consultancy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the WPP Group. Brand Union includes around 500 people across 25 offices.
The primary logo can be broken down into two parts: the emblem and the wordmark. While the wordmark looks quite generic, the pictorial part may appear surprising. You won’t find any elements typically used by airlines in their logotypes, like birds, wings, arrowheads, diagonal lines, or other dynamic details. In spite of this, the Level logo does manage to convey the impression of flight.
It is basically a square consisting of two fields. The width of the fields is the same. The top field is blue, while the lower one is green. The combination stands for the sky and the ground.
The clean, rather bright shade of blue works pretty well in representing the sky as it is rather realistic, while green here is of the shade of fresh grass in a place where there’s no lack of water.
What is Level
Level was created in 2017 by the International Airlines Group as a low-cost long-haul airline. The following year it also started to offer short-haul services using the Level Europe brand. However, in the summer of 2020, Level Europe stopped its short-haul flights.
While it could be more natural for an airline to leave only the “sky” or “flight” themes in the logo, Level probably had a good reason for not doing it. We can suggest that the designers wanted to convey feelings of tranquility and security. Anyway, when using a budget airline, customers may ask themselves whether the reason behind the lower cost is that the company compromises safety. The calm logo showing a piece of land indirectly diminishes these concerns by giving you a subliminal hint that you’re still on the ground.
While the colors may look generic, this is what they are supposed to be. The designers apparently wanted the emblem to be as realistic as possible, so they just couldn’t experiment and opt for rare tints here.
The font is a minimalist sans, where all the lines have the same thickness. The letters have classic proportions and weight, which is one of the ways to imply the company doesn’t want experiments, including experiments with security. It also connotes no-frills service. The clean type looks durable, so it conveys the concept of reliability, and thus safety, supporting the pictorial part of the Level logo. It’s also highly legible from any distance