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For the first time since 1984, the airline Korean Air is updating its charmingly retro look to new branding thats better suited for the modern era.The rebrand, designed by the global creative consultancy Lippincott, includes a new wordmark, refreshed logo, and pared-down color scheme. Its set to debut across Korean Airs operations and on the livery of its aircraft in the coming weeks. The rebrand comes just a few months after Korean Air officially completed merger negotiations with Asiana Airlines, South Koreas second-largest airline. The two companies will become one mega-airline.[Image: Korean Air]As Korean Air begins to integrate Asiana Airlines operations with its own, Asiana Airliness brand identity will be slowly phased out. And, as part of the merger, Korean Air is likely to add new destinations to its offerings, expanding its international profile. Korean Airs new look is meant to differentiate this upcoming phase of its 55-year history as it becomes an increasingly global brand.[Image: Korean Air]Reimagining an iconic brandKorean Airs former branding had a distinctly 80s aesthetic, including a stylized, chunky wordmark and vibrant color palette of sky blue, cerulean, and red. The companys planes have reflected this branding for decades through a distinct blue livery. Dan Vasconcelos, a partner at Lippincott, says that the 80s branding is iconic, adding that its not every day that you get to evolve brand assets that have been untouched for over 40 years.[Image: Korean Air]As the first step of this major undertaking, his team decided to tackle the brands logo. Since its 1984 refresh, Korean Airs logo has been a red, white, and blue interpretation of the Taeguk, the symbol at the center of the South Korean flag which represents balance in nature. Vasconcelos says the team tested hundreds of potential new versions of the Taeguk symbol. Ultimately, they landed on a fluid, ribbon-like iteration, rendered in one seamless blue stroke. The design is inspired by Sangmo Nori, a traditional Korean performance art.[Sangmo Nori] involves performers wearing sangmo, a hat with a long ribbon attached to it, which they spin and twirl in intricate patterns while dancing energetically, Vasconcelos says. It represents abundance, prosperity, and joy. We felt that the ribbon in the tradition carried great symbolism: its universally recognized for its elegance while being resonant in Korea.[Image: Korean Air]The Taeguks tapered edges also reference traditional calligraphy, a reference the Lippincott team brought into the rebrands custom typeface as well. Type studios Dalton Maag and Sandoll designed the bespoke font, which is a modern, all-caps sans serif featuring small calligraphic flourishes. Its designed for optimal legibility in both English and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). The font is also the basis of Korean Airs new wordmark and all other copy across its branding.[Image: Korean Air]A simplified color palette that reads premiumTo give Korean Air a more luxury feel, Lippincott has simplified the brands color palette to a core range of blues, cutting out the former red accents. Doubling down on the blue allowed us to be more single-minded and confident, a trait of premium brands, Vasconcelos says. Think of Hermes, Louis Vuitton, or Tiffanythey are bold in their use of color but do it with simplicity and flair. [Image: Korean Air]In keeping with the brands tradition, Vasconceloss team decided to buck the white livery trend used by most national trends and stick with Korean Airs blue fuselage. During the research process, he says, the blue livery was a particularly memorable brand asset for customers.[Image: Korean Air]Other elements of the livery have been tweaked to align with the companys plans to expand: The word Air has been removed from the livery to project Korean Airs standing as South Koreas largest airline, and the brands Hangul name has also been removed with global audiences in mind.[Image: Korean Air]My client Kenny Chang [SVP and CMO of Korean Air] sums it up well by saying that the vision for Korean Air is to be a global airline which happens to be based in Korea, Vasconcelos says. This helped inform key design decisions such as removing the airlines Hangul name from the livery as well as designing a symbol that, while infused by national iconography, isnt too similar to the national flag.Korean Airs streamlined rebrand is both elegant and logical, given the companys growing ambitions. Still, time will tell if the brand will have the staying power of its former visual identity, which resonated strongly with the airlines audience for more than 40 years.
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E-Commerce
In summer 2022, when artificial intelligence-based text-to-image generation tools hit the mainstream, architects were cautiously excited. The ease of generating real-ish images of design concepts and buildings with just a few simple sentences was irresistible, and many architects began experimenting with ways of letting AI quickly do some of the sketching and ideating they’d gotten used to spending hours or days laboring over. It’s almost like you’re speaking a building into existence, one architect said. But now, with AI maturing and getting integrated into tools and industries far and wide, a surprisingly low number of architects are actually using AI in their work. Architects are slow to adopt AI Only 6% of architects report regularly using AI for their jobs, and only 8% of architecture firms have implemented AI solutions, according to a new report from the American Institute of Architects. Based on a survey of 541 members of the architecture profession, the report shows an industry-wide shyness around AI adoption, with many unsure what AI can do for them, and a large percentage39%downright uninterested in finding out. Some architects are making AI a part of the way they practice, though, and the report shows strong interest in using AI more, particularly among architects younger than 50. The report finds that while only 8% of firms are actively using AI on a day-to-day basis, 20% are currently working on implementing AI solutions. More than half of architects have at least experimented with AI tools, and three-quarters are optimistic about AI automating some tasks. The reality is that there are a lot of industries that are still figuring this out, says Evelyn Lee, president of the AIA. I do think that architects, when it comes to new technology implementation, we do tend to lag a little bit. But there’s big opportunity Lee, who has a tech background, says architects can do more with AI than just generate quick imagery. Other use cases include marketing, project management, and construction document creation. According to the report, image-based content production is still the main way architecture firms use AI, but Lee suggests that the tech may be more useful for the operational side of the business, where it could resolve simple tasks, like eliminating the need for manual time sheets, as well as more labor-intensive jobs, like maintaining and updating building material libraries. “There’s a really big opportunity there for AI to illuminate the library and the wealth of materials available right now,” she says. “So much of what we learn about new materials is from the individual manufacturer’s rep showing up and saying Here is the latest ceiling tile. That could help architects improve the way their projects are designed, lower their costs, and even reduce their environmental footprint by finding new sustainable materials to integrate into their projects. AI tools could speed up product delivery The biggest opportunity ultimately is on the product delivery side, Lee says. As AI begins to be more fully integrated into the software that architects use to design their projects, it can speed up the process of turning design concepts into detailed plans and eventually into the construction documents used to get projects built. That could open the door for smaller architecture firms to be more competitive. There are more than 19,000 architecture firms in the U.S., and almost three-quarters of them have fewer than 10 employees, according to another recent AIA report. The software will allow them to do more, quicker, better, Lee says. That’s a huge opportunity for AI to be leveraged to democratize the design delivery process.
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E-Commerce
As part of the Trump administrations continued efforts to attack renewable energy and bolster the fossil fuel industry, officials are considering using emergency powers to bring retired coal plants back online and prevent others from shutting down. But doing so would raise electricity prices for Americans, come with disastrous environmental impacts for the world, and only benefit coal companies. While at CERAWeek, an energy conference by S&P Global, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgim told Bloomberg Television about the potential coal resurgence. Under the national energy emergency, which President Trump has declared, weve got to keep every coal plant open, he said. And if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back. Coals dominance has been declining in the U.S. for years. It currently supplies just 16% of the countrys power, down from just over 51% in 2000. And since 2000, about 780 U.S. coal-fired units across the country have come offline; more than 120 coal plants are expected to shutter here within the next five years. Bringing those coal plants back is an incredibly dumb idea, says Peter Gleick, a climate scientist with a background in energy systems and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Its dangerous. Its expensive. Its impractical. The logistics alone of bringing retired coal plants online would be difficult. Its not like turning on and off a lightbulb, he says. Many plants have been entirely decommissioned, and some have even been repurposed into renewable energy and storage projects. Bringing back the equipment to allow them to burn coalor updating outdated infrastructurewould be expensive and time consuming. In the last five years, most of the U.S. coal plants that closed were, on average, 50 years old; globally, coal plants have retired at an average age of 37 years, says Christine Shearer, an analyst at Global Energy Monitor. Those coal plants were also retired for economic reasons; it’s more expensive, Gleick says, for a utility company to run a coal plant than to build renewables or operate natural gas plants. A 2019 analysis found that about three-quarters of U.S. coal plants would save money by switching to wind or solar. A 2023 analysis upped that figure to 99% of coal plants. That means utilities likely wouldn’t want retired coal plants to come back online. Any attempt to do this will raise electricity prices for everyone, he adds. Coal producers themselves would profit from more coal, of course, and some utility companies have actually delayed coal plant retirements because of concerns around grid stabilitybut the cost of keeping those “zombie” coal plants open ends up falling on consumers. One Maryland coal plant set to close in 2025 will now be kept open until 2029, a move that could cost residents up to $250 million per year through higher energy bills. Then theres the environmental and health impacts. Burning coal is linked to air pollution that contains toxins and heavy metals, and can cause asthma, brain damage, heart problems, cancer, and even premature death. Bringing back retired coal plants would have a direct environmental and health impact on the local communities around such plants. When four Kentucky coal plants were either retired or retrofitted with emissions controls, one study found, local asthma-related hospitalizations plummeted. Coal plants have also primarily been located in low-income communities, as well as communities of color. But bringing back coal would do more than just damage people in the U.S. The environmental costs would be borne by the entire globe. Coal is by far the worst offender at releasing damaging, polluting greenhouse gasses, Gleick says. Environmental experts say the world needs to completely phase out coal power by 2040 in order to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals. Some places have already completely retired their coal power plants. In September 2024, the United Kingdomthe first country to build a coal power plantbecame the first major economy to completely stop using coal to make electricity when its last coal power plant shut down. Even India and China, which both still burn immense amounts of coal, are trying to transition away from that energy source, because of both the economic and environmental costs. For us to go in the other direction is just lunacy, Gleick says. Its not coal specifically that Americans want, he notes; its energy broadly, and there are far more cheaper, faster ways to produce energylike through solar and wind. “If we are in an energy emergency then we should roll back the recent pauses on wind and solar permitting, not try to bring back old coal plants already a decade past their lifetime, on the backs of American ratepayers,” Shearer says. Solar specifically is the cheapest source of electricity, the International Energy Agency says, and also the fastest energy source to deploy. (Besides finding new sources of energy, we could also work to increase how energy efficient our systems and tools are, Gleick says, which is even less expensive to do.) No country that has reduced its dependence on coal would voluntarily go back to that energy source Gleick adds. “The only people who want more coal to be burned are fossil fuel company executives. No one else wants this,” he says. “Bringing coal back to the U.S. is not making America great again.”
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