British Airways: Flight of the Future
British Airways collaborated with the Royal College of Art and BOND London to launch BA 2119: Flight of the Future Exhibition. The exhibition explores visions of the next 100 years of aviation, and recently took place in the Saatchi Gallery, London.
The exhibition presented concepts exploring the nature of flight and travel in the future, considering themes such as automation, AI, sustainability, advanced jet propulsion, hyper personalisation and health. Forty of the college’s post-graduate students spent five months devising the futuristic concepts.
More Info
client:
British Airways
contributions:
Identity design
Exhibition design
Art direction
UI & UX design
Motion design
Animation
Data analytics
industry:
Aviation
“So, where will we be 100 years from now? What will aviation look like in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years and beyond?”
“Flight of the Future exhibition explores what the customer experience of the future will look like, pushing the boundaries of imagination and exploring how we, and future generations, will travel the globe.” British Airways
BOND designed the visual identity and exhibition graphics which were inspired by the “Fly - Egg” module of the exhibit. The graphic circular shape represents and becomes the vessel for content while metaphorically representing the vision, view and eye of the future; and the icon and unifying element for the identity.
Alongside the designs, British Airways developed Fly — one-of-a-kind, full motion, virtual reality experience charting the history of flying and looking forward to the future. Fly enabled visitors to become a time-travelling pilot, from the earliest imaginings of Leonard da Vinci and his ornithopter, to the Wright Brothers’ success on Kitty Beach, to that first inaugural passenger flight to Paris. Users could experience the Concorde, the brand new A350 and the imagined flight of the future. Credits: Picture This Productions – VR Creative and Lead Production House Novelab – VR Development Moco FX – Motion Platform OWidgets – Multisensory Production
BOND curated the exhibition in addition to designing the signage, print literature for visitors to take away. A digital platform was created containing further information about each exhibit, videos and film in addition to asking questions to visitors gathering opinion about the future of flight. This combination of interactions lead to a more more in-depth experience available to the visitor via a tablet. This platform also collected data of how many visitors engaged with the projects, how long and what was most popular. This resulted in greater understanding garnered around visitors’ behaviours and interaction with the exhibition.
The collaboration between British Airways and Royal Collage of Art, led to collaborative projects from students across the College which imagined the flight of the future, based on an in depth research report commissioned by British Airways to mark their centenary.
The RCA students spent three months developing concepts that build on insights from the BA 2119. Concepts from over forty MA, MRes and PhD students engage expertise across Intelligent Mobility, Service Design, Textiles, Fashion, Architecture, Interior Design, Design Products and Innovation Design Engineering.
The BOND team continues to work with BA. The Saatchi exhibition was further re-appropriated to live beyond and outside its limited time at the Saatchi, recently touring to the Shanghai Expo as part of the Best of British exhibit. Taking a complex physical exhibition and digitising to create a touring exhibition that engages and is interactive with its audience. A very simple digital win. The project offers fascinating insight, visionary concepts and design thinking, and creates value and sources for inspiration for future aviation research and initiatives for the airline as well as for the public.
