VIRGIN ATLANTIC

Creating design consistency and efficiency

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN, USER INTERFACE DESIGN, INTERACTION DESIGN

What was the problem?

The Virgin Atlantic brand has undergone many refreshes over the years, and with it inconsistencies along the way. Several visual UI styles, logo variations and platforms contributed to this. As a newly formed Digital product team we wanted to create a single source of truth for all future work to be based on.

Developing our brand volumes

Throughout this design process we played with the idea of ‘Brand Volumes’, where our homepage would be pushed all the way to eleven, while more transactional pages would be dialled down to focus on easing the customer through our journey.

During our initial discovery we played with various aspects of our digital identity; how closely we align to our marketing campaigns, how we use photography, what our colour apportionment was and how we can maintain WCAG accessibility standards throughout this process.

Focusing on a direction

Although this aesthetic felt fun and vibrant, it lacked the luxuriousness and quality that we’re famous for, and was too closely aligned with our campaign artwork which was likely to change.

We went back to our research and tweaked our approach by using more white space, thinner type weights and more sophisticated photography.

Considering our In flight experience

Once we were happy with the direction our web experience was heading in, we wanted to validate these principles on our IFE (Inflight Entertainment system) to ensure we could scale across all our digital touchpoints.

The onboard screens aim to encapsulate the user within their viewing experience at any time of the day, so a dark mode was required to keep the brand feeling alive but comfortable for customers on night flights.