David’s kinds of blue
In the British city of Norwich, the team around David Hedley-Noble’s painted the fin of a Boeing for test purposes. The paint
experts applied six different shades to the component before the decision was made as to what the new “Lufthansa Deep Blue” would look like.


#ExploreTheNew
A color that meets the requirements of the aviation industry
will not be available from your local home improvement store. For this you need
a specialist such as David Hedley-Noble. The British designer not only knows
what to add to achieve the perfect shade, but also what to leave out


You can’t be serious! When David
Hedley-Noble arrived at the Airbus
plant in Toulouse in December 2017,
employees initially didn’t believe what he
was telling them. Turn the production plan
for the Lufthansa A350 on its head? Paint
the aircraft in a new Lufthansa color? The
new Lufthansa blue? “They thought we
were crazy,”
grins Hedley-Noble. It’s not
surprising, because at this point only a few
insiders knew that Lufthansa was introducing a new color. Hedley-Noble was one of
them. But more than that, he created the
new blue shade of paint for the aircraft. “For
Lufthansa, it was a hugely important decision,” he says. “You bear the responsibility
on your shoulders because you know that
the result of your work will be around for a
very long time. No one will say after two
or three years, Oh, let’s change it again.”
It was for precisely this reason that
Lufthansa chose him to do the work. He
specialize in aircraft design. “My job is not
just to create a design. I also have to make
sure that it works in reality.” And reality
means on aircraft. The paint is applied to
a curved surface that is constantly in motion. It’s exposed to sun, rain, snow, hail
and wind. But over a period of decades it
must still look as if it has just been freshly
painted.
Less is more
For almost 20 years, Hedley-Noble has
been working on achieving this feat. He
became familiar with the software that
carmakers use to simulate paint processes
and added to it until it was perfect for the
aviation industry. This allows him to see
on the screen exactly how the impact of
a color changes if the angle of a wing is
shifted by a few degrees.
“You can’t buy a color like this in your
local home improvement store,” he says.
“You have to create it yourself.” The new
shade had to be simple but elegant. Less is
more. “The key consideration is not adding
things, but removing everything disruptive from the color.” The main problem is
too much white. “White kills every color,”



says Hedley-Noble. Because it makes them
appear “flat.” “When you look at an aircraft
painted in a flat color, your eyes stop when
they reach the fuselage. I wanted to create
a color that your eyes can dive into like
a pool.” The team spent three weeks
reducing two basic colors, testing the
results and then removing more components that influenced the shade.
They created 45 shades of blue that were
applied to metal plates 30 x 30 centimeters
in size and then picked out their favorites.
When Hedley-Noble flew to Frankfurt
in July 2017 with six metal plates in his
luggage, he thought he would find out
which color Lufthansa would choose. “Most
airlines make their decisions using samples like this,” he says. But the Lufthansa
design team members to whom he presented his samples surprised him. “They
said: Nice colors. Now we’re going to paint an aircraft with them.”


In the end it wasn’t a complete aircraft,
but a complete fin. The Air Livery PLC
team constructed it in a paint shop at Norwich
airport in the east of England out of several
Boeing components that had been bought
for the purpose. One reason for the choice
of location was the weather. The city is only
30 kilometers from the North Sea and often
sees sun, rain and wind in a single day.
There was also another reason: less is more.
With a smile, Hedley-Noble lists all the
things not found in Norwich: “Bloggers,
journalists, plane spotters. In other words,
no nosy people.”
A deliberately unobtrusive awning
screened the Lufthansa fin in one corner
of the otherwise empty paint shop. Behind
it, the experts were working almost around
the clock: painting the fin, leaving the paint
to dry, assessing the results, removing the
paint, applying a new primer, letting the
primer dry, and then starting all over again.
One for all? Unfortunately not
Once the design team had chosen the
color for the entire fleet, which was now
known as “Lufthansa Deep Blue,” the
celebrations began. But the work wasn’t
finished. “The same color looks different
on every aircraft type. For example, it
appears darker on a larger area than on
a small one,” says Hedley-Noble. So he
sat back down at his computer and developed deep blue mixes that were perfect
for every aircraft type in the Lufthansa
fleet. The first reality check took place in
Toulouse, before the painting of the two
machines that would be used to present
the new color to the public on February
7 (see box). The fins of the A350 and
A320 that Airbus manufactures there for
Lufthansa are painted months before the
machines are finally assembled.
This is why Hedley-Noble and his
team caused such disruption in Toulouse
in December. But ultimately everything
worked out. Once the first fin had been
painted, it looked exactly as it should.
Hedley-Noble says that one member of
the Lufthansa team asked him at this
point whether he was relieved. He laughs
loudly. “I said to him that if I was surprised
it had all worked out, we would have a
problem.” And then he adds rather more
quietly, “But I was very, very pleased – and
also rather proud.”