Old Hawaiian Airlines Logos: A Before-and-After Design Comparison
A visual comparison of the old Hawaiian Airlines logo designs and the current identity, focusing on typography, color, iconography, scalability and practical use of vector assets.
Contents
What is the essential answer to the old Hawaiian Airlines logo question?
The old Hawaiian Airlines logo most commonly refers to the mark used before the 2017 rebrand. In that version, the wordmark "Hawaiian" appeared in a flowing script-like serif with a distinctive open "H" and a small bird or flower accent near the word. A separate Pualani icon, a stylized woman's head with flowing hair that also reads as a tropical flower, often accompanied the wordmark. Some older aircraft liveries used the wordmark without the icon on the fuselage, while printed materials frequently paired them. The 2017 redesign kept the Pualani concept but redrew it as a cleaner, more geometric icon under a modernized wordmark. When people search for the old logo, they usually mean the pre-2017 script-style wordmark rather than the much earlier propeller-era emblems.
What meaningful differences separate the old and new logo designs?
Typography
The old wordmark used a flowing serif with curved strokes and decorative terminals. The capital "H" had an open, almost handwritten structure, and the lowercase letters featured high contrast between thick and thin lines. This gave the logo a romantic, resort-like and slightly vintage feel. The current wordmark is a more geometric serif with even stroke weights, tighter letter spacing and a taller x-height. It reads as cleaner and more contemporary, but it loses some of the hand-drawn warmth of the old version.
Iconography
The old Pualani icon was detailed, with multiple curved strands suggesting hair, a profile face, and a floral silhouette. At small sizes, these fine strands could merge or become indistinct. The new Pualani is simplified: a circular hibiscus-like form with a crescent profile created by negative space. It is bolder and easier to read at small sizes, but it is also more abstract. The old icon was often shown in a purple-to-pink gradient or with layered shading, while the new icon generally uses flat color.
Color
The old logo appeared most often in deep purple, magenta, and coral or orange. The gradient treatment on the Pualani icon added depth but created reproduction issues in one-color printing and single-color vector use. The new identity uses a more disciplined palette centered on Hawaiian purple, coral and a deep blue, with flat fills as the standard. This makes the current assets easier to convert to monochrome without losing legibility.
Spacing and lockup
The old vertical lockup often placed the Pualani icon above the script wordmark with generous space between them. The current lockup is tighter and more modular, with the icon and wordmark aligned to a shared geometric grid. This improves consistency across digital and print applications but sacrifices some of the old mark's free-flowing character.
Scalability and vector editability
Observable detail suggests the old script wordmark is more difficult to use at very small sizes. Its thin strokes and decorative terminals lose clarity when scaled down. The current wordmark holds up better because of its more even stroke weight. However, the old Pualani icon, despite its fine internal lines, is still more recognizable than the abstract current icon when reproduced large. For vector editing, both systems require careful path management: the old script has many bezier points and irregular curves, while the new mark has cleaner, more predictable geometry. This makes the current logo easier to redraw or modify in a vector editor, but it does not mean the old asset is unusable.
Recommendation
If the intended use is a modern, digitally consistent identity, the new logo is the safer choice because of its simpler geometry and stronger small-size performance. If the intended use is nostalgic, heritage-focused or design history material, the old script wordmark and detailed Pualani icon are more distinctive and emotionally resonant. The choice depends on whether clarity or character matters more for the specific application.
Limitations of the comparison
This comparison is based on observable design features of widely circulated logo specimens. No performance tests or controlled legibility studies were used. Color accuracy depends on display calibration and the source of the vector or raster asset. A filename or file extension alone does not confirm that an asset is true vector geometry or that it is licensed for reuse; permission must be verified separately.