Testing Jetabout's Templates

A quick livery using Photoshop and Jetabout templates.

Eurowhite and Malaysia

A popular trend towards an all white fuselage with basic titles and a tail began in the 1960's. To my knowledge, the first airline to introduce such a livery was Air West, a small San Francisco based carrier that was later bought by Howard Hughes. The airline believed the the all white fuselage was a major contributing factor to the inflight crash of a Hughes Air West DC-9 and USMC F-4 fighter jet in 1971, and, as a precaution, re-painted their aircraft banana yellow.

In 1974, Air France introduce their new livery on their first Concorde. The livery did away with the old fashioned cheat line and introduced a simple, plain white scheme. Air France, a true global carrier at the time, spread the trend throughout the industry, with other european carriers such as Sabena and Lufthansa following suit.

Several major airlines have adopted a euro white scheme. These include Qantas, Emirates, Delta and South African Airways. Each of these liveries are both clean and elegant. It is with this is mind that I reach the inspiration for this post. What on earth were Malaysia Airlines thinking when they threw this monster together?

What a bland, blank, boring livery! I would have at least expected something with a little color, similar to the Malaysia hospitality advertisements the airline is so well known for. Malaysia Airlines already have a solid livery design, albeit a little dated. Given their shaky financial history, one must ask whether rebranding their airline with a livery ill befitting a world class carrier, especially in the face of such tough competition from low cost carriers such as Air Asia is a prudent decision. I quick search on the internet finds this, what would have been a far better choice in my opinion.

So come on Malaysia, get it together.

Design Resources

People often ask me where I get the templates I use to make my drawings with. I know that many people prefer to make their own, but my skills are far from such a level of expertise.

There is a wide range of useful templates and pictures available online that can easily be edited and changed. Here is a list of useful resources:

• Boeing have 3-view, scale drawings available here on their website. These files can be opened in Adobe Illustrator and can be easily edited. Airbus have similar drawings but they have been removed from the public Airbus website.

• Eduardos Page has a very diverse collection of reasonable quality aircraft templates, but lacks more modern aircraft.

• Jetabout.webs.com is an excellent site for realistic looking, blank templates.

Australian Airlines

I've been working on several different liveries for an airline based in Melbourne. It would operate 777's from Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to S/E Asia, Europe and the US.


Here are my first designs, what do you think?

Original Design

New logo, tail, adjusted titles.

Airbus A340-300, just for fun. Same logo, different tail and colors.