Early in November 2019 Airbus rolled out the first Aegean Airlines A320neo in the company's new livery and aviation enthusiasts were quick to notice and photograph the event:
Since the new design is not scheduled to be unveiled until February 12, 2020, the title, logo, and website have been masked out. But with a little detective work using nothing but publicly available images it is possible to reveal what the livery likely will look like:
So how was this possible? The first clues were discovered because the masking Airbus uses to obscure the livery is not entirely opaque. Under the right lighting conditions and camera exposure some details can be extracted using basic photo manipulation. Freelance photographer Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter posted this image on twitter:
By adjusting the brightness and contrast, among other things, two "strokes" become clearly visible on the tail:
Since it is clear the tapered light blue stroke on the tail cone continues up onto the rudder, yet no latent pattern is discernible under the masking, it is reasonable to presume the masking is sufficiently opaque to conceal the light blue paint but not sufficient to hide something lighter and with more contrast to the dark blue background—e.g. white paint. So I made the two strokes white.
What is interesting is the light blue stroke visible on the tail cone closely matches where the larger white stroke would lie if it were flipped vertically, so that is what I did for both strokes.
This turned out to be a very lucky, if informed, guess. Upon closer examination of the photo there is a thin sliver on the trailing edge of the rudder and a smaller sliver near the center of the tail where the underlying paint is visible:
I blurred a crop of the tail, increased the saturation to bring out the color, and placed arrows with colors that correspond to the visible paint colors underneath. Despite its appearance, the vertical tail of an airplane is not flat. It's quite tricky to overlay a two-dimensional graphic, as in the right panel above, onto a bulging, tapering three-dimensional object while also accounting for perspective. Still, the colors align almost perfectly with the logo, as is also clearly demonstrated using another photo by @Frenchpainter:
As for the title, this too is visible underneath the masking (after photo manipulation) in the following image by Dieter Müeller:
The final missing elements were the website address and the final registration number. The former was deduced by the shape of the masking above the rear windows and by precedent. The latter comes from the video in this tweet by Pilotshop.gr @11aviation:
It is of course possible the actual logo may differ somewhat, but I believe this is a pretty good guess based on the evidence so far. Please keep in mind this is not my design and I claim no credit for it. This is simply what I can ascertain about the livery using facts, logic, and intuition. We will see come February how this turns out!
UPDATE
It appears Damianos Chronakis @danicro independently came to a similar conclusion about the basic elements of the livery design as well:
Good work! The masking material Airbus uses leaves a lot to be desired.
[February 19, 2020] I just came across a forum post from December 10, 2019, at Airliners.gr where the author used photo manipulation to demonstrate that part of the livery is visible through the masking. This is the earliest example I have found so far and it predates my own discovery by over a week. Congratulations!
UPDATE: LIVERY REVEAL
On February 12, 2020, the actual livery was finally unveiled and unsurprisingly (yet with much relief) it turned out to be pretty much as predicted here. There were some minor difference where the white and light blue strokes (gull wings) of the logo meet, as well as some subtle differences in the typographic details of the title font. The website address and font were the most glaring errors, but those were thoroughly obscured by the masking.
Shortly after the unveiling the first commercial flight with the new livery took place and here is how it looked:
Once the need for secrecy was no longer necessary, images and video of the making of the new design quickly made their way to the public. One interesting graphic from PriestmanGoode, the agency responsible for the rebranding, showed which Pantone colors were used for the official logo:
The colors are Pantone 2147 C (dark blue) and Pantone 2134 C (silver blue).
One of the fonts, possibly the one used for the web address on the aircraft, is URW Geometric Extended. The main title font is likely a custom design.
The official title and logo have also been made available but so far not in vector format. Here is a work-in-progress rendition in SVG:
'%3E%3Cg transform='matrix(.39688 0 0 .39688 -766.11 520.91)'%3E%3Crect x='-1270.2' y='763.68' width='400' height='100' fill='%23002677'/%3E%3Cpath d='m-1132.8 793.83c-14.309 0-23.538 7.5478-23.538 19.784s9.2294 19.909 23.538 19.909c7.6354 0 15.174-2.0257 20.545-5.8591v-16.656h-15.877v6.0508c0 0.68995 0.5606 1.25 1.2506 1.2501h6.2554v5.2333c-4.0077 1.7156-8.8721 2.3301-12.728 2.3301-8.0068 0-14.498-3.9248-14.498-12.312s6.491-12.312 14.498-12.312c5.0282 0 11.771 1.0435 16.093 4.2137l3.5594-6.7903c-5.2342-3.1821-12.126-4.8416-19.099-4.8416zm-106.55 0.96945-19.593 37.637h9.3814l3.6127-6.9339c0.3194-0.58956 1.0719-1.2893 2.1874-1.2893h20.244l3.5647 6.8471c0.5795 1.1082 1.609 1.3791 2.2236 1.3761h7.874l-18.892-36.292c-0.3965-0.76253-1.2181-1.3456-2.2175-1.3456zm38.317 0c-0.69 0-1.2501 0.56005-1.2501 1.25v36.387h35.911c0.8167 0 1.5026-0.58942 1.6412-1.3761l1.0506-5.9573h-30.279v-7.8548h24.055v-7.3329h-24.055v-7.783h26.859c0.7713 0 1.4942-0.5438 1.6417-1.3808l1.0501-5.9526zm101.34 0c-0.69 0-1.2501 0.56005-1.2501 1.25v36.387h35.911c0.8167 0 1.5026-0.58942 1.6412-1.3761l1.0506-5.9573h-30.279v-7.8548h24.055v-7.3329h-24.055v-7.783h26.859c0.7713 0 1.4943-0.5438 1.6417-1.3808l1.0501-5.9526zm61.877 0-19.593 37.637h9.3819l3.6127-6.9339c0.3195-0.58956 1.0714-1.2893 2.1869-1.2893h20.244l3.5642 6.8471c0.5796 1.1082 1.609 1.3791 2.2236 1.3761h7.8739l-18.892-36.292c-0.3965-0.76253-1.218-1.3456-2.2175-1.3456zm37.124 0v37.637h8.1664v-26.943l27.171 26.238c0.45503 0.43954 1.0754 0.70486 1.7394 0.70486h6.2182v-37.637h-6.9164c-0.69001 0-1.25 0.56005-1.25 1.25v24.155l-25.581-24.702c-0.48525-0.4686-1.1129-0.7028-1.7379-0.7028zm-233.7 8.5111 7.1143 13.666h-14.228zm201.53 0 7.1143 13.666h-14.228z' fill='%23fff' style='font-feature-settings:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal'/%3E%3Cg transform='translate(-.00017468 -5.0112e-5)'%3E%3Cpath transform='matrix(.26458 0 0 .26458 -1264.9 712.49)' d='m1261.5 240.57-0.3321 2.8301c42.754 16.559 69.775 46.345 82.375 73.457 12.516 26.93 23.877 44.458 55.172 65.598h50.467c-61.266-34.474-55.564-61.538-83.984-93.32-20.948-23.425-54.431-44.242-103.7-48.564zm0.07 46.414c1.5375 6.0909 6.988 25.893 15.529 46.441 8.5412 20.548 20.646 41.37 39.736 49.029h39.719c-58.674-30.24-29.966-63.137-94.984-95.471z' fill='%23fff'/%3E%3Cpath transform='matrix(.26458 0 0 .26458 -1264.9 712.49)' d='m1316.8 382.45c-19.09 7.6589-31.195 28.481-39.736 49.029-8.5413 20.548-13.992 40.351-15.529 46.441 65.018-32.334 36.311-65.231 94.984-95.471zm81.879 0c-31.295 21.139-42.656 38.667-55.172 65.598-12.6 27.112-39.621 56.898-82.375 73.457l0.3321 2.8301c49.266-4.3225 82.75-25.139 103.7-48.564 28.421-31.782 22.719-58.846 83.984-93.32z' fill='%2393a5cf'/%3E%3C/g%3E%3C/g%3E%3C/g%3E%3C/svg%3E "Aegean-Airlines-SVG-Logo")
If you can't save the logo as SVG (e.g. in Microsoft Edge) then copy and paste the following code snippet into a text editor (such as Notepad) and save it as Aegean-Airlines-SVG-Logo.svg (or any name you prefer as long as it has a .svg extension):
Once saved you should be able to load it in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator and use whichever element your project requires. Note: if you intend to use the title for aircraft illustration purposes you will find that it appears a little "fat" compared to photographs. However, since it is a vector shape it is a trivial matter to reduce the thickness.
[Edit] I'm aware the wing tips of the larger gull are not the right shape. I will work on it more when I can.
CREDIT
I wish to extend a very big thank you to everyone who assisted in getting the word out on social media (I have no presence there) after my initial posting on Airliners.net, especially IshrionAviation @IshrionA (IshrionAviation - YouTube) for all the positive comments on twitter and various aviation forums.
Special thanks and gratitude also go out to Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter, Dieter Müeller, and Pilotshop.gr @11aviation (and Clément Alloing too!) for their fantastic photographic work that made this all possible.
All logos and titles are a trademark of Aegean Airlines.
Finally, I would like to credit Med at Airline Empires for providing the A320neo template that was used as the basis for this work. He has made Photoshop templates for many commercial aircraft and I highly recommend anyone interested in this sort of thing to check them out.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The new livery for #Aegean will be showing soon!!!! https://t.co/FVSorJdzJM— Clément Alloing (@CAlloing) November 9, 2019
Since the new design is not scheduled to be unveiled until February 12, 2020, the title, logo, and website have been masked out. But with a little detective work using nothing but publicly available images it is possible to reveal what the livery likely will look like:
 |
| Informed speculation of the new Aegean Airlines livery by LoneSky. |
So how was this possible? The first clues were discovered because the masking Airbus uses to obscure the livery is not entirely opaque. Under the right lighting conditions and camera exposure some details can be extracted using basic photo manipulation. Freelance photographer Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter posted this image on twitter:
 |
| Credit: Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter / Twitter |
By adjusting the brightness and contrast, among other things, two "strokes" become clearly visible on the tail:
 |
| Two clear "strokes" can be seen through the masking. |
Since it is clear the tapered light blue stroke on the tail cone continues up onto the rudder, yet no latent pattern is discernible under the masking, it is reasonable to presume the masking is sufficiently opaque to conceal the light blue paint but not sufficient to hide something lighter and with more contrast to the dark blue background—e.g. white paint. So I made the two strokes white.
What is interesting is the light blue stroke visible on the tail cone closely matches where the larger white stroke would lie if it were flipped vertically, so that is what I did for both strokes.
This turned out to be a very lucky, if informed, guess. Upon closer examination of the photo there is a thin sliver on the trailing edge of the rudder and a smaller sliver near the center of the tail where the underlying paint is visible:
 |
| Light blue and white paint visible (left) corresponding to the logo (right). |
I blurred a crop of the tail, increased the saturation to bring out the color, and placed arrows with colors that correspond to the visible paint colors underneath. Despite its appearance, the vertical tail of an airplane is not flat. It's quite tricky to overlay a two-dimensional graphic, as in the right panel above, onto a bulging, tapering three-dimensional object while also accounting for perspective. Still, the colors align almost perfectly with the logo, as is also clearly demonstrated using another photo by @Frenchpainter:
 |
| Animated comparison of the logo and paint. |
As for the title, this too is visible underneath the masking (after photo manipulation) in the following image by Dieter Müeller:
 |
| Credit: Dieter Müeller / xfw-spotter.blogspot.com |
 |
| The photo above, after image manipulation. |
The final missing elements were the website address and the final registration number. The former was deduced by the shape of the masking above the rear windows and by precedent. The latter comes from the video in this tweet by Pilotshop.gr @11aviation:
4K Video: @aegeanairlines A320NEO delivery @ATH_airport @Airbus #sxneo https://t.co/csr0UnwnJu pic.twitter.com/2I6zE3DgFK— Pilotshop.gr (@11aviation) December 22, 2019
 |
| All clues come together. Original image credit: Dieter Müeller. Edited by LoneSky. |
 |
| Original image credit: Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter / Twitter. Edited by LoneSky. |
It is of course possible the actual logo may differ somewhat, but I believe this is a pretty good guess based on the evidence so far. Please keep in mind this is not my design and I claim no credit for it. This is simply what I can ascertain about the livery using facts, logic, and intuition. We will see come February how this turns out!
UPDATE
It appears Damianos Chronakis @danicro independently came to a similar conclusion about the basic elements of the livery design as well:
That was my version a few days earlier. Do I like it? Not really. But Lonesky did a great job revealing the livery! Really impressed! pic.twitter.com/dMCAb90G5t— Damianos Chronakis (@danichro) December 23, 2019
Good work! The masking material Airbus uses leaves a lot to be desired.
[February 19, 2020] I just came across a forum post from December 10, 2019, at Airliners.gr where the author used photo manipulation to demonstrate that part of the livery is visible through the masking. This is the earliest example I have found so far and it predates my own discovery by over a week. Congratulations!
UPDATE: LIVERY REVEAL
On February 12, 2020, the actual livery was finally unveiled and unsurprisingly (yet with much relief) it turned out to be pretty much as predicted here. There were some minor difference where the white and light blue strokes (gull wings) of the logo meet, as well as some subtle differences in the typographic details of the title font. The website address and font were the most glaring errors, but those were thoroughly obscured by the masking.
 |
| Updated livery with official Pantone colors. |
Shortly after the unveiling the first commercial flight with the new livery took place and here is how it looked:
 |
| Aegean Airlines A320neo first commercial flight with new livery. |
 |
| Credit: Martin Tietz/Munich Aviation Spotter |
Once the need for secrecy was no longer necessary, images and video of the making of the new design quickly made their way to the public. One interesting graphic from PriestmanGoode, the agency responsible for the rebranding, showed which Pantone colors were used for the official logo:
 |
| The official Pantone colors are shown in the upper left panel, courtesy Runway Girl Network. |
The colors are Pantone 2147 C (dark blue) and Pantone 2134 C (silver blue).
One of the fonts, possibly the one used for the web address on the aircraft, is URW Geometric Extended. The main title font is likely a custom design.
The official title and logo have also been made available but so far not in vector format. Here is a work-in-progress rendition in SVG:
If you can't save the logo as SVG (e.g. in Microsoft Edge) then copy and paste the following code snippet into a text editor (such as Notepad) and save it as Aegean-Airlines-SVG-Logo.svg (or any name you prefer as long as it has a .svg extension):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg width="600" height="150" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 158.75 39.6875" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
<metadata>
<rdf:RDF>
<cc:Work rdf:about="">
<dc:format>image/svg+xml</dc:format>
<dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage"/>
<dc:title/>
</cc:Work>
</rdf:RDF>
</metadata>
<g transform="translate(1270.2 -823.99)">
<g transform="matrix(.39688 0 0 .39688 -766.11 520.91)">
<rect x="-1270.2" y="763.68" width="400" height="100" fill="#002677"/>
<path d="m-1132.8 793.83c-14.309 0-23.538 7.5478-23.538 19.784s9.2294 19.909 23.538 19.909c7.6354 0 15.174-2.0257 20.545-5.8591v-16.656h-15.877v6.0508c0 0.68995 0.5606 1.25 1.2506 1.2501h6.2554v5.2333c-4.0077 1.7156-8.8721 2.3301-12.728 2.3301-8.0068 0-14.498-3.9248-14.498-12.312s6.491-12.312 14.498-12.312c5.0282 0 11.771 1.0435 16.093 4.2137l3.5594-6.7903c-5.2342-3.1821-12.126-4.8416-19.099-4.8416zm-106.55 0.96945-19.593 37.637h9.3814l3.6127-6.9339c0.3194-0.58956 1.0719-1.2893 2.1874-1.2893h20.244l3.5647 6.8471c0.5795 1.1082 1.609 1.3791 2.2236 1.3761h7.874l-18.892-36.292c-0.3965-0.76253-1.2181-1.3456-2.2175-1.3456zm38.317 0c-0.69 0-1.2501 0.56005-1.2501 1.25v36.387h35.911c0.8167 0 1.5026-0.58942 1.6412-1.3761l1.0506-5.9573h-30.279v-7.8548h24.055v-7.3329h-24.055v-7.783h26.859c0.7713 0 1.4942-0.5438 1.6417-1.3808l1.0501-5.9526zm101.34 0c-0.69 0-1.2501 0.56005-1.2501 1.25v36.387h35.911c0.8167 0 1.5026-0.58942 1.6412-1.3761l1.0506-5.9573h-30.279v-7.8548h24.055v-7.3329h-24.055v-7.783h26.859c0.7713 0 1.4943-0.5438 1.6417-1.3808l1.0501-5.9526zm61.877 0-19.593 37.637h9.3819l3.6127-6.9339c0.3195-0.58956 1.0714-1.2893 2.1869-1.2893h20.244l3.5642 6.8471c0.5796 1.1082 1.609 1.3791 2.2236 1.3761h7.8739l-18.892-36.292c-0.3965-0.76253-1.218-1.3456-2.2175-1.3456zm37.124 0v37.637h8.1664v-26.943l27.171 26.238c0.45503 0.43954 1.0754 0.70486 1.7394 0.70486h6.2182v-37.637h-6.9164c-0.69001 0-1.25 0.56005-1.25 1.25v24.155l-25.581-24.702c-0.48525-0.4686-1.1129-0.7028-1.7379-0.7028zm-233.7 8.5111 7.1143 13.666h-14.228zm201.53 0 7.1143 13.666h-14.228z" fill="#fff" style="font-feature-settings:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal"/>
<g transform="translate(-.00017468 -5.0112e-5)">
<path transform="matrix(.26458 0 0 .26458 -1264.9 712.49)" d="m1261.5 240.57-0.3321 2.8301c42.754 16.559 69.775 46.345 82.375 73.457 12.516 26.93 23.877 44.458 55.172 65.598h50.467c-61.266-34.474-55.564-61.538-83.984-93.32-20.948-23.425-54.431-44.242-103.7-48.564zm0.07 46.414c1.5375 6.0909 6.988 25.893 15.529 46.441 8.5412 20.548 20.646 41.37 39.736 49.029h39.719c-58.674-30.24-29.966-63.137-94.984-95.471z" fill="#fff"/>
<path transform="matrix(.26458 0 0 .26458 -1264.9 712.49)" d="m1316.8 382.45c-19.09 7.6589-31.195 28.481-39.736 49.029-8.5413 20.548-13.992 40.351-15.529 46.441 65.018-32.334 36.311-65.231 94.984-95.471zm81.879 0c-31.295 21.139-42.656 38.667-55.172 65.598-12.6 27.112-39.621 56.898-82.375 73.457l0.3321 2.8301c49.266-4.3225 82.75-25.139 103.7-48.564 28.421-31.782 22.719-58.846 83.984-93.32z" fill="#93a5cf"/>
</g>
</g>
</g>
</svg>Once saved you should be able to load it in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator and use whichever element your project requires. Note: if you intend to use the title for aircraft illustration purposes you will find that it appears a little "fat" compared to photographs. However, since it is a vector shape it is a trivial matter to reduce the thickness.
[Edit] I'm aware the wing tips of the larger gull are not the right shape. I will work on it more when I can.
CREDIT
I wish to extend a very big thank you to everyone who assisted in getting the word out on social media (I have no presence there) after my initial posting on Airliners.net, especially IshrionAviation @IshrionA (IshrionAviation - YouTube) for all the positive comments on twitter and various aviation forums.
Special thanks and gratitude also go out to Aviation Toulouse @Frenchpainter, Dieter Müeller, and Pilotshop.gr @11aviation (and Clément Alloing too!) for their fantastic photographic work that made this all possible.
All logos and titles are a trademark of Aegean Airlines.
Finally, I would like to credit Med at Airline Empires for providing the A320neo template that was used as the basis for this work. He has made Photoshop templates for many commercial aircraft and I highly recommend anyone interested in this sort of thing to check them out.
Why not just "wait until they unvail it"??!!!
ReplyDeleteWhere is the fun in that? :)
Delete