" A Thousand Congratulations!"
The results are in! We would like to thank our participants for your fantastic entries and your patience with all the delays in the competition. We would also like to congratulate the winners of this year's contest!
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The results shall be posted as follows, each post shall have about 5-8 entries from the bottom rank up with their respective points and a short commentary on the design. further ado, the lowest ranking designs of this year are as follows;
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{15/40} MUSCATAIR
“Muscatair to me presents a whole host of problems. First of all, I find the overall design incredibly lazy and quite frankly jarring. The tail shows no creatively as there quite literally two blocks of color and the national emblem slapped on top. The billboard style script is bland and uninspired. Meanwhile, the Arabic titles are in every sense wrong. They are backwards, broken apart, and simply say “Sultanate of Oman,” without any reference to the airline name or its titles. My second point of contention is the overall concept of the airline. Sure Middle Eastern hubs can support supercarriers if you stretch their history with a bit of imagination. However, with every ME supercarrier, they serve all the essential destinations first. According to your list Muscat Air does not serve key destinations such as Medina, one of the holiest sites of Islam, and Khartoum, a key source of expatriates in the Sultanate. Meanwhile, the airline serves just about every US state. While it is already a stretch for Oman to sustain such a supercarrier, the imagination component is always weighed against the realism and context of the carrier. In sum, Muscatair delivers a lazy, unrealistic representation of what a Middle Eastern airline should look like.”
{18/40} BAHRAINI
"The very first guideline of this competition was for design entries to be as original as possible. With Bahraini, while I appreciate the effort made into what little that makes it unique, the design is still clearly inspired by Gulf Air. In fact, I would much more willingly accept this design if it was passed as a reimagined Gulf Air or a personal take on its rebranding because everything from the Falcon to the color scheme is just too similar. In addition, the font pairing is as uninspired as the new Gulf Air livery. While I may not be saying that the design in itself is bad, in fact, I quite like it as a reimagined Gulf Air but this design concept is not what this contest is about."
{General Remark 1} While I am not sure this applies here for certain I would still like to point out the following in the Arabic titles. In short, Arabic differentiates between words that are feminine or masculine, while the demonym Bahraini alone is masculine, in this context the full title in Arabic (with certain words such as or "Airlines") may grammatically force the demonym into the feminine form. An example is Iraqi Air, here the standard English demonym Iraqi is used but in its full titles in Arabic, it is expressed Irāqiyyah, in feminine form. Stylistically, you may either decide to use the English demonym or transliterate the Arabic title such as with Saudia. All in all, there are many factors that influence whether to use which form in Arabic depending on the title used (it differs if you used the Arabic word for Airways, or Airlines ... etc). Of course, this is all advanced Arabic grammar, but the difference of one Arabic letter is what kept you from a perfect Arabic title.
{18/40} AIR ARABIE
“While I appreciate the novel attempt at naming the airline I have to disagree with the french name and the reasoning behind it. Saudi Arabia does not share the same history with France as other countries in the Middle East do, and French is not widely spoken in the country. While the concept might work in North Africa and Lebanon for example, its application to a Saudi carrier is more confusing than innovative. The titles are horrendous in my opinion for the exaggerated “Middle Eastern” font chosen to represent the English name, while the Arabic titles though grammatically sound are completely bland (Times New Roman of Arabic) and of course do not pair well with the rest of the logo. The double eagles do not help. As for the livery the application of the falcon on the tail shows some promise, but the rest of the design is bogged down with its murky colors and messy incoherent elements. One final piece of critique I have lies in your conceptualization of the airline. Saudi Arabia is a very conservative muslim country that houses the two holiest sites in Islam, and where consuming or producing alcohol is punishable my whips. It does not many any sense whatsoever for a Saudi airline to serve alcohol onboard, regardless of the the duration of the flight or its destination. In conclusion, the effort is appreciated but this airline is completely insensitive to the history and culture of the county you chose to base it in."
{18/40} AJNIHA
“Ajniha celebrates the naval pride of Kuwait with its flood of blue colors and the lovely abstract falcon logo that goes very well with the overall design. However, I must be quick to point out the similarity I see to the newest Kuwait Airways design, especially with the English titles and the use of a bird logo. Secondly, while “Wings” is a suitable English airline name it does not transliterate well, as it looks heavy and will be easily mispronounced by non-native speakers (some letters do not have an equivalent to English, so when transliterated only approximate letters are used). This is why some airlines that use Wings in their name usually use the English name for their English titles, and reserve “Ajniha” for the Arabic titles: see “Cham Wings.” Meanwhile, the font pairing is not great, with it being written backwards and broken apart not helping the aesthetic either. Arabic is a cursive language written from right to left. All in all, the similarity to Kuwait Airways is just too much for me to love this design as much I could.”
{19/40} PRIMAIR
"Primair, before reading any background info. made me think of a small executive arrear of some sort similar to Privatair and Rotana Jet and I thought the idea was interesting given the high demand for business travel in the gulf, and that would have made Primair unique among the entries so far. While the introduction information does not necessarily say this is the cse, I must assume from the introduction information that Primair is just a another LCC, much to my disappointment. Even as a regular LCC the design does have a premium feel behind it, with the lovely gray gradient effects and the calligraphic Arabic. However, I must point out that the design in general features too many flaws for further praise. First of all, the white tiles on the light gray fuselage make them difficult to read; while the English is somewhat legible the Arabic text I barely even saw. The English font choice is itself not amazing, but I overlooked that to focus on the Arabic titles which are a complete disaster.
{General Remark 2} Arabic is a cursive language written from right to left.
The Arabic titles on the livery are backwards, disconnected, and are in the most boring font imaginable (as stated in other reviews, the Times New Roman of Arabic); mind you, while the white text was already difficult to read the aforementioned errors made reading the titles almost impossible. Thi is besides the fact that the Arabic translation was inaccurate. Furthermore, the choice of tail art is questionable. Arabic calligraphy is generally legible to any native speaker, and if there be difficulties you can usually refer to the English name or the standard Arabic titles to understand the meaning of the artwork. As much as I tried to read the art I must assume you chose a random piece of calligraphy, as beautiful as it is, and slapped it on the tail. I must say that the tail art does look nice, however, as random as it may be. In conclusion, Primair has so much potential for a stunning design and a novel concept, but at this stage the design looks half baked.”
{19/40} ALTAIRA
“I feel like I must look beyond the (mandatory?) genericness of a Low Cost Carrier, but Altaira does not deliver much I am afraid. The color choice is interesting, mixing the luxury of purple with the blue of the water gives it that coastal UAE vibe perhaps but that's as far as it goes. As far as the titles go I can say that the pairing is excellent between the two fonts. On the other hand, the name is inaccurately translated. Altaira is indeed “The Bird” in Arabic but it seems you put in the English transliteration in Google Translate and got an Arabic transliteration of the English word, meaning it is spelled completely incorrectly. Initially the word choice strikes me as strange and awkward, but after really thinking about it could make a cute concept due to the alliteration between Altaira and the Arabic word for airline, among other reasons. In sum the design is not as truly Arabian as one would hope for. Frankly, as far as generic LCC designs go, it might as well be an average one. With a slight reconceptualization, the hidden potential of this airline could really be unlocked.”
{19/40} RIHLA
“Rihla is an odd little design that deserves a lot of praise for the effort put into it, despite its flaws. First of all, the name choice great especially for an LCC, choosing “Trip” in Arabic. However, the titles are altogether very awkward with their misalignment, cases, and the bad font pairing with Arabic on the logo. On the fuselage, the different sized titles also look very awkward. While I understand this is more of a generic LCC, and not many Arabic LCCs employ much to refer to their Arabian culture I am still disappointed in the vaguely Arabian red pattern on the cheatline and tail. In sum, this is a decent concept with a lackluster generic execution. Having said that, because of how generic this airline looks it may serve to function as just that: one of those tiny generic LCCs from random places. I would much rather see this airline based in Yemen, Egypt, or other stranger places than a megahub such as Dubai where a destination of its caliber require a whole different level of design.”
“Quite frankly, this design has left me torn. One one hand, the concept is interesting in some ways. On the other hand the execution is unrefined and confusing. For my peace of mind I shall not tackle the historical livery and simply focus on the rebrand. First of all, the titles and the explanation behind them is completely wrong. “طير” — “Tir” with a vowel like in fear — in standard arabic is the imperative form of “fly.” However, in most Arabic dialects (therefore in colloquial language) it is used as the plural form of bird— pronounced “Tayir” or “Tair” with the vowel sound in “dare.” What was done with this design is that the Arabic titles (which should be in standard Arabic) state a verb, while the English titles may refer to a bird? Moreover, the claim that the word also means “Airplane” is inaccurate as well. In sum, you wanted me to think bird, but instead I thought “go fly” and you sort of forced “airplane” somehow? As all these words (fly, flight, airline, bird) have the same root, I hope you can see how it was thoroughly confusing. On the other hand, I have come to appreciate the pearly Eurowhite color scheme chosen as opposed to the more traditional red, the white textured appearance is bold and refreshing in my opinion. However, the typefaces chosen for the titles are disappointing and bland in both languages. In conclusion, there is a lot of confusion with this design that inhibits its potential.”