United Airlines and Continental Airlines have announced a merger. United is buying Continental, and apparently the new company will still be called United Airlines but will use the Continental logo and font. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything like this before — a merger where one company adopts the old company’s font and logo but keeps its old name. Something seemed a little off about the logo until I realized that everything was the same except the text.
While looking for information about this, I found this little game, where you have to names as many brands as possible based on the font.
When I heard the company was keeping the United name, I just assumed the Continental name and logo would disappear (and I would’ve been a little wistful about it since I used to fly CO a lot several years ago), so I was surprised when I saw the name/logo mash-up. Not sure I really like it, given how established each one is separately in my mind. (Heh, in that font game there was one I couldn’t get so I had to give up.)
It is kind of quirky. There likely is a practical aspect here: Repainting planes is expensive. Since Continental’s fleet is younger, and already more uniform, its just easier to paint the older planes as they need maintainance. Personally, I think the font choice is bad. United had the better font :-) Did you find this piece?: http://theroxor.com/2010/01/04/the-evolution-of-company-logos-after-a-merger/
Fun game. It reminds me of an ad campaign they had for Dexter last year in the Times Square subway station that featured mockups of magazine covers with all the titles replaced with “Dexter.” It was fun to try to identify them all.
Dave, I hadn’t seen that link. Very cool.
United isn’t buying Continental. The merger is a stock swap and the companies will be represented 50/50 in the new company. The CEO of the new company is the Continental CEO.
Autofill put my email address in the website field. Is there a way to delete that? I didn’t catch it till it was too late.