Air Montenegro rebrand
Air Montenegro needed a rebrand. The competition had one non-negotiable constraint: the new identity had to retain the visual DNA of the original Montenegro Airlines logo — an eagle head in profile, looking in the direction of flight, rendered with the illusion of a single stroke. The challenge wasn't designing freely. It was designing within tight boundaries and finding something original inside them.
Industry
Aviation & Travel
Type
Visual Identity
Year
2020
Key decisions
Honouring the constraint without being limited by it
Rather than a literal interpretation, I took a freer but deliberate approach — preserving the core visual code while pushing the form further. I introduced negative space and anti-form to reduce visual noise in the original, simplifying the stroke and giving the mark more breathing room.
The final mark works on two levels: the required eagle head in profile, and a wider suggestion of a bird's silhouette in flight — a layered meaning that reveals itself on closer inspection.
Colour as meaning
I expanded the palette to a richer range of blues — referencing the sea, sky, rivers, and lakes of Montenegro. This wasn't decorative — it extended the semantic field of the original mark, grounding the identity in the geography and character of the country the airline represents.
Transparency as a design tool
I used transparency as a visual technique throughout the identity, suggesting depth and dimension while signalling contemporary design sensibility. This also opened the door to three-dimensional applications — livery, signage, and environmental design.
Outcome
3rd place, international rebranding competition. The judges noted that the solution took a freer but correct interpretation of the original visual code, enriched it with a layered blue palette reflecting Montenegro's natural landscape, and significantly improved on the optically congested form of the submitted brief — through the use of anti-form, stroke simplification, and transparency as a contemporary design technique.
