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. Through multiple iterations I introduced negative space and anti-form, simplifying the stroke and reducing visual noise from my earlier submission. 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 in 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.
