Norwegian Safety Broschures

Background
In 2022, Norwegian Air Shuttle made a strategic decision to renew the safety brochures placed in all the seat pockets of their aircraft.
A new design was required in order to meet the new standards for clarifying safety procedures while on board an aircraft.
In addition, they wanted to improve their brand recognition by modernizing the instructions to align with their recently updated visual identity.

To add to the fresh look and feel, Norwegian wanted to create a more neutral portrayal of people.
Previously, the illustrations were characterized by a distinct ethnicity and had a body ideal that some passengers found problematic.
Additionally, the illustrations were done in 3D, which didn’t work well at a small scale.

Solution/Process
We started by incorporating the established brand colors: red, white, and blue; as key elements in the illustrations.
To ensure that the illustrations worked at smaller scales, we worked extensively on simplification and created a style that borders the intersection of illustration and iconography.
We carefully aligned this look to ensure it harmonized well with Norwegian’s established pictograms and design language.

We used large areas, inversion, and contour lines to guide the eye and to give the illusion of more complex shapes within a simplified design.

We took into consideration that the illustrations must communicate instructions in a potentially stressful situation, so we chose to remove all facial expressions.
By keeping the faces clean, we avoided the issue of showing emotions that can easily be misinterpreted.
This allowed the actions of the figures to receive greater focus, as one is not drawn to the face as is common when showing eyes.

Result
The solution became an illustration style that effectively communicates in all scales, conveys safety procedures in a clear and understandable manner for passengers, and strongly identifies with the Norwegian brand.
In addition, the people portrayed in the new safety information brochure are designed to be ethnically neutral with a less extreme body shape.
To represent different genders and ages, we consistently used a woman, a man, and a child in addition to a flight attendant.

All illustrations were carefully reviewed and approved by the Civil Aviation Authority to ensure that safety procedures and guidelines were maintained in the best possible way.
We also had to ensure that all representations of aircraft, equipment, and doors were easily recognizable from reality.