Eye Magazine

Phillip Pennington has made a fascinating contribution to graphic design history with his book Red Square: Mary de Saulles and the 1960s BEA corporate identity (The Modernist, £30). BEA was British European Airways, one of two Union Jack-flying, state-supported postwar British airlines. Pennington tells the story of Mary de Saulles, architect and exhibition designer who, with the support of her boss, product designer John Lunn, developed the italic grot caps in a red square symbol that became the foundation of the airline’s house style (as corporate identity was more modestly called then) from 1959.

De Saulles’s tenacity and experience meant that her designs extended from the aircraft livery and marketing materials, to the architecture and interiors of travel centres and airport terminals. Wings were painted red to identify the planes from the ground and the red square cleverly incorporated into the aircraft’s dark fuselage stripe so when VIP passengers such as The Beatles were photographed at the top of the stairs, the logo was visible in the background. Not only was de Saulles’s identity comprehensive, but it also predated F. H. K. Henrion’s programme for Dutch airline KLM in 1961 and Mary Wells’s funky work (1964) for Braniff in the US.

BEA’s planes, ephemera and design manuals are all beautifully documented in a book (also designed by Pennington) that is a powerful tribute to an under-celebrated designer and a logo that still looks jet-age Modern.

Simon Esterson, art director of Eye, London

First published in Eye no. 109 vol. 28, 2025