The heart featured on the logo of Southwest Airlines Co. represents love and care for the customers, while the palette reminds of the beauty of the sky at any time of the day.
What is the symbol of Southwest Airlines company?
The symbol of Southwest Airlines is a tricolor heart, which has several meanings, showing the company’s essence and values. First of all, the heart stands for the love and care of Southwest Airlines to its customers. Secondly, the three diagonal stripes on the heart represent three different shades the sky has throughout the day — at dawn, during the sunset, and at night.
The visual identity of Southwest Airlines has undergone three major redesigns throughout the years, and each of the four emblems, created for the company is completely different, featuring a new color palette, style, and mood.
What is Southwest?
Southwest Airlines, is the name of the largest low-cost air carrier in the United States, which was established in 1971. The company is based in Dallas, Texas, and has a fleet of more than 700 planes, flying to almost a hundred destinations worldwide.
The very first version of the Southwest Airlines logo boasted a bright and clean badge, composed of three wide diagonal lines in orange, red, and yellow, with a white horizontal banner crossing them in their middle point. The “Southwest” lettering in black was written along with the banner, executed in a traditional and strict sans-serif typeface with clean and neat contours of the capital letters.
In 1971 the logo was redesigned, and now it featured a fancy gold and blue badge, where the main part was circular and had two stylized elongated wings spread to the sides. In the middle of the circle, there was a red contoured heart placed to show the company’s love and attention to its customers. The “Southwest Airlines” wordmark in all capitals was written in blue sans-serif around the gold circular perimeter of the badge.
The redesign of 1998 introduced a new logo of the brand. The blue and red plane was drawn above a simple yet bold sans-serif lettering in black. The inscription in all capitals was executed in thick strong lines and evokes a sense of protection and stability, while the colorful plane represented passion, caress, and reliability of the airlines.
With the redesign of 2014, the visual identity of the company dramatically changes. The new emblem boasts sleek blue lettering in a title case, placed on the left from a delicate heart, composed of three diagonal lines — blue, red, and yellow. The lettering is executed in a fancy modern sans-serif typeface with smooth lines, rounded angles, and straight cuts.
Instead of the Helvetica type, the airline received a completely new font, which was developed by Monotype in collaboration with Lippincott and named Southwest Sans.
The Southwest logo is dominated by a rather dark shade of blue presumably inspired by the color of the sky. You can also see the red and gold, which have been present on the company logo since its first days.