Looking for brand simplicity? Take the airport test – the ultimate acid test

Philip Davies, president, EMEA at Siegel+Gale, explains how, in complex environments like airports, simplicity comes not from removing information, but from designing systems that make the right signals instantly recognisable.

If you want to understand why simplicity matters in branding, go to an airport.

It’s tempting to think of simplicity as an aesthetic choice: minimal logos, restrained colour palettes, clean typography. But in high-stakes environments, simplicity is operational. It is about performance – a truth visible in the way these massive hubs function.

During his tenure as writer in residence at Heathrow, philosopher Alain de Botton observed that the “departure boards promise alternative lives,” a remark that captures the paradoxical nature of airports: highly ordered spaces that still evoke endless possibilities.

Airports have inspired both awe and humour. Architect Norman Foster called them “cities in miniature,” highlighting their immense scale and the intricate flow of activity within them. In a more sardonic vein, Andy Warhol remarked that the nicest thing about airports is the ability to buy perfume at three in the morning – a nod to the quirky human experiences that coexist within these vast spaces.

Taken together, these observations reveal the airport as a marvel of human engineering. They are both imaginative and practical, yet they remain among the most complex systems we have ever built.

Every day, airports move tens of thousands of people in different directions, under extreme time pressure and across languages and cultures. And yet, millions of travellers navigate them successfully.

Most of the time, they do it without reading a single word.

Clarity at a glance

Walk through Heathrow, Changi or Schiphol, and you’ll notice something interesting. You are not decoding paragraphs of instructions; you are following a trail of visual breadcrumbs. A fork and knife symbol leads to the food court; a plane icon points the way toward the gates. You move through the space instinctively because the design does the thinking for you.

This intuitive navigation isn't an accident of modern design; its foundations were laid decades ago. The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo signalled one of the major turning points in airport signage. Designers created a comprehensive system of international pictograms – visual symbols that communicated meaning without words – so global visitors could navigate the venues easily. These principles quickly spread to transportation networks and public infrastructure. Today, they are evident throughout every terminal: baggage claim icons, restroom symbols, passport control markers and security lanes.

The brilliance lies in their restraint. They are not expressive illustrations or decorative graphics; they are distilled ideas. It works because it must: Airports serve travellers from every part of the world. A sign that requires explanation or translation has already failed. Meaning must be delivered instantly.

In that sense, airports operate under the same condition every brand should aspire to: clarity at a glance.

Stress demands simplicity

Airports are emotionally intense environments. People are tired. Sometimes excited. Often distracted. They worry about missing flights, losing things or what they’ve left behind at home. They’re managing luggage, passports and boarding passes. Often, they’re managing other people too.

Stress quickly reveals the truth about design. In these conditions, no one has patience for cleverness. If a traveller has to stop and think about what a sign means, the design has already failed. Calm conditions can tolerate complexity; stress does not.

Branding works the same way. When audiences are busy or overwhelmed, as they often are, clarity becomes the most valuable design attribute. The most successful brands are not the most elaborate – they are the ones that remove friction and make the next step obvious. This is vital in our most attention-poor market to date, where digital noise is deafening, and every brand is fighting for a second of cognitive bandwidth. In this environment, your brand is either a clear signpost – or part of the clutter.

And while stress reveals where clarity is needed, designing that clarity requires systems.

Simplicity requires systems

Ironically, simplicity isn’t so simple to achieve. The apparent ease of moving through an airport hides an extraordinary amount of design work. Take Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, widely admired for its wayfinding: a consistent system of yellow signage, clear typography, pictograms and numbering logic. Once travellers understand the basic structure – letters for concourses, numbers for gates – the entire building feels predictable.

The truth is, simplicity requires systems – a way of working that lets people navigate without having to relearn the rules at every step.

Systems don’t always rely on rules or signage alone. They can also leverage memorable landmarks – distinctive, recognisable cues that anchor people within the environment. At Qatar’s Hamad International Airport, passengers navigating the sizable and very beautiful terminal often say, “Let’s meet at The Bear.” The reference is a 23-foot yellow teddy bear sculpture beneath a giant desk lamp in the central concourse. The artwork has become an unofficial navigational tool. In a building full of information, the most distinctive signal is often the easiest one to remember. And the choice is telling: a teddy bear, something familiar and comforting, placed in the middle of an enormous international terminal.

The lesson is clear: in complex environments, simplicity comes not from removing information, but from designing systems that make the right signals instantly recognisable.

The orchestration of complexity

Taking this back to the realm of branding – a brand is not a logo or a campaign. It is a network of touchpoints, apps, websites, packaging, retail environments, advertising, customer support. If each behaves differently, the experience becomes cognitively heavy.

To see this in action, look at Apple’s ecosystem. Jump from your iPhone to your Mac, open an app, or stroll into a store – and somehow, it all just works. Buttons, menus, signage, even the scent of the store feel familiar. Behind the scenes, there is immense complexity, yet the experience feels effortless, almost magical. Clear cues and a consistent design language guide customers from one touchpoint to the next without a second thought.

I call it invisible complexity. To quote De Botton once again, he describes airports as “vast orchestras of hidden coordination” – baggage handlers, air-traffic controllers, security teams, pilots, engineers and logistics staff all working together so that a passenger’s journey appears straightforward.

The traveller experiences a simple sequence: arrive, check in, pass security, find the gate, board the plane. But that simplicity is only possible because immense complexity has been carefully organised behind the scenes.

Good branding works the same way. When it succeeds, the experience feels effortless. Customers intuitively know what to do next. The system guides them without demanding attention. The complexity hasn’t disappeared. It has simply been managed.

The final audit: Questions for brand leaders

I challenge you to conduct the “airport test” on your brand:

Could someone navigate our brand the way they navigate an airport?
Could a new customer understand where to go next without instructions?
Could they recognise key signals instantly?
Could they move through the experience without needing explanations?

If the answer is no, the issue may not be creativity. It may be clarity.

The airport test emphasises that in environments where millions of people must understand something immediately, simplicity stops being a stylistic preference. It becomes an operational necessity.

Despite the extraordinary infrastructure behind them, the traveller’s experience must feel simple: arrive, move forward, find the gate.

The best brands work the same way. They don’t just look simple. They make progress obvious.