Air Botswana

Helping an airline take flight

Brief

Air Botswana is Botswana's state-owned national flag carrier, with its headquarters located in Gaborone. It operates scheduled domestic and regional flights from its main base at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport.

Simplr was approached by an independent contractor to participate in the rebrand of the parastatal to mark its 30th anniversary.

Solution

Although this project has been a source of much controversy due to its misrepresentation in the media and appropriation of artwork on fleets, it is still a project we feel privileged to have been a part of and have therefore decided to continue its roll-out as can be seen below.

Project Included

Identity design

Visual language representation

A snapshot of the original brand

Identity Design

While creating the Air Botswana identity we explored various ways of representing the 'B' in Air Botswana in unique and meaningful ways by incorporating Botswana’s rich heritage of basket weaving patterns and mudcloth patterning and hinting at the to and through of air travel through the use of arrows.

The updated identity also gives the 1972 -1998 logo a nod by mimicking a plane through the clever use of its logotype and icon.

Typography and colour palette

We chose the font family Agenor in two different weights as our primary typeface for Air Botswana as it mimics the rounded corners of both the logotype and icon. Gotham serves as a trusted support font in body copy and compliments layouts in its simplicity.

For the airlines colour palette we used Botswana’s national flag colours, light blue, dark grey and white.

Visual language

Air Botswana currently flies to 6 destinations, namely Cape Town, Francistown, Gabarone, Johannesburg, Kasane and Maun. We used the airport abbreviations as one would typically find on an airline ticket of these 6 destinations in combination with the relevant destination visual to communicate their well known tagline ‘Going your way’.