JetBlue Tail-Fin Pattern Exploration

Self-initiated exploration · year unconfirmed · unpublished

Designer and art director: Paul Morris

A tail fin is an airline's most-seen surface and JetBlue gives every aircraft a different one, so a pattern set has to survive at fin scale, again on a T-shirt, and again beside a wordmark it must never compete with.

Pattern library · twelve colourways

What I made

Twelve boards. A library board holds twelve colourways around the JetBlue wordmark knocked out white at the centre. Individual boards then push single systems to fin scale: interlocking triangles in blue, orange and green; a chevron field beside a rotated checkerboard diamond; concentric bands meeting a triangle grid; a moiré of embossed squares. The last boards apply them — a painted tail fin, a T-shirt, flip-flops, a patterned Mini, and a full livery mock-up composited above parked aircraft on a tarmac.

Tail-fin pattern exploration: interlocking blue, orange and green triangles. — Pattern study · interlocking triangles

Tail-fin pattern exploration: chevron field beside a rotated checkerboard diamond. — Pattern study · chevron field and rotated diamond

Tail-fin pattern exploration: concentric blue bands meeting a triangle grid. — Pattern study · concentric bands, triangle grid

Pattern applied as aircraft tail livery, flip-flops and a patterned Mini Cooper. — Application · tail fin, flip-flops, car

Pattern applied to tail fin, T-shirt and sandals as a merchandise mock-up. — Application · tail fin, T-shirt, sandals

Patterned tail-fin livery mock-up shown above parked aircraft on a tarmac. — Application · full livery mock-up

Taking projects from October. Editorial, campaign and digital art direction.

paul@pbmdesign.com