Frontier Airlines Logo

Frontier Airlines LogoFrontier Airlines Logo PNG

The Frontier Airlines logo stands for safe travel. Promises a smooth takeoff and landing. The company prioritizes passenger safety. The emblem also hints at a special “green” offer of airlines with free transportation.

Frontier Airlines: Brand overview

Founded:February 8, 1994
Founder:Frederick W. “Rick” Brown, Janice Brown, Bob Schulman
Headquarters:
Denver, Colorado, United States
Website:flyfrontier.com
Frontier Airlines is the link between cities in the United States, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Canada. It is based in Denver and flies to over 100 destinations, serving about 90% of the United States population. Its fleet is constantly replenished with new air transport, and for the entire time, Frontier Airlines’ aircraft have never appeared in a fatal situation. In terms of pricing, this organization is considered low-cost and, to some extent, imitates Spirit Airlines, offering customers affordable fares.

Meaning and History

Frontier Airlines Logo History

There were two periods in the air transport enterprise history: the first began in 1950 and ended in 1986, and the second lasted from 1994 to the present. The original Frontier carried about 87 million passengers before it filed for bankruptcy and merged with Continental Airlines. The last aircraft with the iconic Frontier Airlines logo on board took off in 1986.

In the early 1990s, several former Frontier employees co-founded AeroDenver Travel Services with an ex-United Airlines pilot. Almost immediately, the Denver company was renamed Frontier Airlines. In addition to the name and base of the bankrupt enterprise, she inherited its symbols. This happened in 2014 when designers gave a second life to the classic Saul Bass emblem.

Old and new Frontier are two different airlines with the same name. Although the existing organization leaders have tried to connect them at the branding level, they do not have a common history. The current logo of the airline is a tribute to the classic style. It is combined with the aircraft tail section’s modern design, which has depicted wild animals since 1994.

The emblem has undergone several dramatic changes, as it was modernized with delays in several periods. However, the designers have tied the old and new versions of the logo, choosing the legendary icon in the form of a bird’s wing, which replaces the letter “F.”

What is Frontier Airlines?

Frontier Airlines is an American airline based in Denver, Colorado, owned by Indigo Partners, a private equity firm. Frontier Airlines is a low-budget US territorial airline with domestic flights. More than 100 settlements are known to which it flies. Among them are Trenton, Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and others. In addition, it serves 31 overseas destinations. The air carrier was founded in 1994 and is the technical brand of Indigo Partners. The location of the air transport company is the city of Denver, where it has a hub airport. The company is now in a difficult situation because it took a quarter of a million dollars to compensate for the financial damage caused by the pandemic outbreak. The reason is the coronavirus pandemic, which has limited movement around the country and flights abroad.

1958 – 1972

Frontier Airlines Logo 1958-1972

In 1958, Lewis Bergman Maytag, Jr. became the majority shareholder of Frontier Airlines. The oldest logo, which was the predecessor of the modern airline, features a flying arrow with half-segments. The halves represent the tip and tail. This is a special visual trick so that the arrow resembles as much as possible an airplane directed forward. Behind him, a thin golden line stretches, indicating the trajectory of the flight and the trail in the sky. The emblem also has a boomerang – a symbol of forwarding movement with backward movement. It is an allegory of performing round-trip flights (in two directions). This makes the logo dynamic. Below is the Frontier Airlines italic lettering in flat capital letters. The palette is borrowed from nature itself: gold (the color of the sun) and blue (the color of the sky). The new symbol adorned the side of the Convair CV-340 aircraft in 1959. By the way, the very first logo with a winged arrow appeared in 1950, but it was red-green and had a different design.

 

1978 – 1986

Frontier Airlines Logo 1978-1986

This emblem was created by renowned director Saul Bass, who has collaborated with celebrities such as Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. He also designed some of the aviation industry’s most stylish emblems, including United Airlines and Continental Airlines. The designer tried to make the logo of this period radically different from the previous version.

It features a stylized “F” in the form of a bird’s wing of three-wide feathers. White horizontal stripes of different lengths are located in a red circle. Below is the carrier’s name, written in strict block letters, sans serif. Special emphasis is placed on the “R,” the right side of which is not connected to the left leg.

This symbol was introduced on April 30, 1978, and remained in use until 1986, when the company went out of business.

1994 – 2001

Frontier Airlines Logo 1994-2001

After the airline rebooted with a re-launch in the profile market, it left the old name but took on a new logo. This is understandable – its founders were a group of individuals who headed the previous structure of Aeroflot. The founders invited another specialist to create a personal identity to make the past and modern organizations somehow different from each other. Therefore, the author of this emblem is the designer Dan Cotton. He proposed a different concept based on a dark blue rectangle with white lettering inside.

The title spans two lines. Above is the word “Frontier,” which is made in italics of uneven height. The “jumping” letters outwardly resemble the trail of an airplane, as it is painted in films and animated films. The font is semi-connected, grotesque, individual. To emphasize the originality of the air transport company, the author of the logo made similar the uppercase “F” and the lowercase “t,” beating them with straight, elongated lines. In the second line, he put the word “Airlines.” It is written in a classic wide-spacing serrated typeface.

2001 – 2014

Frontier Airlines Logo 2001-2014

This period is characterized by a highly legible emblem with clear capital letters. The developer changed the handwritten style to the printed style, which made the inscription immediately gain versatility: it is visible and understandable at first glance, which was not the case in the previous version. Despite this adjustment, the authors did not use serifs – they settled on a chopped typeface with wide lines.

In addition, a dark color stands out better against a light background than a light color against a dark background. And also, thanks to the white color of the backing, it became possible to open the logo – to make it limitless (without frames), which is symbolic for an air transport company. The second half of the name is made in small and thin letters. The predominant colors at this time were green, black, and white.

2014 – today

Frontier Airlines Logo 2014-present

At the end of 2013, the airline was acquired by the Indigo Partners LLC group led by Bill Franke. The new owners decided to change their business strategy, so they simplified the tariff structure and ordered from PS: Studios, Inc., a new livery for Frontier aircraft. The designers have given a second life to the Saul Bass emblem to highlight the brand’s history. They included it in the inscription, using it instead of the first letter.

The icon consists of three stripes of different lengths, reminiscent of a bird’s wing. The developers used an italic font to balance the elements, but without the handwritten style. The inscription is still in printable sans-serif characters in geometrically proportional letters. Instead of the traditional “F,” there is a brand name. Below the word, “Frontier” is “Airlines” – in the lower-left corner, between “T” and “R.”

Font and Colors

Frontier Airlines Emblem

The airline’s current symbol is a tribute to its past, even though the new brand is only formally associated with the old Frontier Airlines. Visual identity is based on the geometric F-shaped badge invented by Saul Bass in 1978.

The logo was presented in September 2014 at the presentation of the Airbus A320-214 N227FR aircraft. It turned out that the designers returned the iconic Frontier F and the arrow pointing forward. This is a reference to the original emblem, which first appeared aboard the Douglas DC-3 in 1950. The retrospective approach integrates past and future, although a stylized “F” in the word mark impairs legibility.

The icon of three curved shapes is combined with the grotesque, geometric Gotham. This font family was designed by American typographer Tobias Frere-Jones in collaboration with Jesse Ragan. The inspiration comes from the signs on old buildings in New York. The Frontier Airlines logo features a bold version of Gotham, with the first word in italics. A slight tilt to the right symbolizes forward movement.

Frontier Airlines Symbol

The first logos used a typeface reminiscent of Moki Soft with differences in the letters “F” and “R.” In modern versions, the inscription is made in fonts that almost coincide with Magnum Sans Black and JT Leonor Extra Bold Italic.

The American airline switched to green in 1994. Designers from PS: Studios, Inc. decided to keep this palette but chose a new shade (# 318468), close to dark turquoise. And they made the word “AIRLINES” light gray (# 9E9A97).

About Company

The roots of this airline go deep into history because it was founded in 1959 and existed until 1972. Then it had a short period of stagnation, followed by a resumption of work in 1978. However, in 1986, Frontier Airlines ceased operations again, merging with Continental Airlines. Designer Saul Bass designed the logos for both airlines.

The re-creators of the aviation service were United Airlines pilot Frederick W. “Rick” Brown, his wife Janice Brown, and Bob Schulman. When Continental Airlines began to reduce international flights from Denver airport in 1993, the three formed charter firm AeroDenver Travel Services to meet the public’s demand on international destinations. They invited M.C. “Hank” Lund, the former CEO of the former Frontier Airlines. At the same time, the airline adopted its former name – Frontier Airlines. Its registration took place in the winter of 1994.

Like its prototype company of the same name, the new Frontier had a hub in Denver and for nine years used the motto “The Spirit of the West,” which was written in italics above the portholes. And the word “Frontier” was on the fuselage of all her aircraft. By the early 2000s, the carrier improved its aircraft fleet and expanded its route network. However, in 2020, the company found itself on the verge of collapse due to lawsuits brought against it when it did not want to compensate for the cost of tickets to passengers who could not fly due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Frontier Airlines color codes

ViridianHex color:#318468
RGB:49 132 104
CMYK:63 0 21 48
Pantone:PMS 555 C
Spanish GrayHex color:#9e9a97
RGB:158 154 151
CMYK:0 3 4 38
Pantone:PMS Cool Gray 7 C

What is the logo for Frontier Airlines?

Frontier Airlines has a text logo. It shows the full name of the air carrier, made in two types of fonts: the upper word is bold, wide, the lower one is thin, small. They are both sleek and sans serif. Instead of F, a winged symbol is used that connects the aviation company’s present and past.

What font does Frontier Airlines use?

Frontier Airlines uses several types of fonts in their logos: Franklin Gothic Heavy and Franklin Gothic Book (in the previous emblem), Gotham (in the current version).