Inspired by a rumor thread on airliners.net, I was thought it would be really cool to mock up a preliminary illustration of a United Airlines 787-8 in the 1980′s Saul Bass livery. I was a bit skeptical at first, but after looking at it for a little bit, I’ve got to say that I’m really liking it. I really hope UA does this!
What a Saul Bass United Airlines 787-8 Dreamliner might look like
Creating these side-view drawings was fairly straight forward, but I did have a bit of difficulty placing the main United Airlines titles at the front section of the fuselage.
The problem is that the Dreamliner’s windows are very high in the airframe, which pushes cheat-line colors really high as well. The orange stripe in the middle is historically where the windows have been positioned in the United Airlines livery, so that left a very small vertical space for the main titles. I would have personally liked to make them larger, but there’s just no room to do so.
Side profile illustration of a retro United Airlines Boeing 787-8 in the Saul Bass livery over a blank background with and without the landing gear deployed
An alternative version of this retro United 787-8
Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I wasn’t really happy with the way that the titles were placed in the illustration above. I thought they were a bit too small, but there wasn’t really anything I could do because of the way the cheat line was situated.
An alternate version of this United 787 in the Saul Bass livery – it looks so much better with larger titles!
However, after doing the first iteration, I learned that UA actually had a variation of this livery with larger titles – which was used primarily on the narrow body aircraft. The difference was that the cheat line was moved down on the fuselage so that the orange stripe ran through the windows (instead of the red stripe). I think this looks much better applied to the 787.
I’m really glad that airlines see the value in these retro liveries. While this Saul Bass United Airlines 787 is purely a rumor at this point, I really hope it eventually becomes a reality. Die-hard 1980′s airline nerds like me would really like to see it!
Norebbo
My name is Scott, and I started in the design industry over 20 years ago with a bachelors degree in Industrial Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI. I have an extensive background in both 2D and 3D illustration, and these days, I spend a majority of my time creating aircraft templates and airliner art. I’m basically an airplane dork.
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