Ranjit Sehambi - Virgin Atlantic 747-400 Livery Design

Virgin Atlantic commissioned Start JudgeGill to design the livery for a special one-off Boeing 747-400 to commemorate and advertise its 21st Birthday.

I was asked to develop new processes and systems that would enable the creative for this aircraft to be fully realised and implemented in the real commercial environment. Little did I know this would be the first of many aircraft I would work on over a 5 year period.

Working closely with Virgin Atlantic’s own internal engineering department, 3M, CGI Areo and the specialist plane spraying team based in at Schiphol, Amsterdam’s Airport, this was one of the most complex and demanding projects I have ever worked on.

This project stretched both my technical knowledge and the computing envelope at the same time. Working with scale models and venturing into the unknown on a daily basis, every detail and dot that was painstaking drawn to an accurate production process I had created had to be 100% accurate every time, otherwise even the smallest of mistakes would be seen on a jumbo scale... literally!

Retouching and technical drawings

I was lucky enough to travel to Schiphol, Amsterdam’s Airport to advise the spraying team about the creation of my production assets and to see the stencils and graphics that had been output by CGI Aero being applied to the Boeing 747-400 in a multitude of stages.

All the stencils and graphics that had been output by CGI Aero would have to fit together seamlessly to ensure a flawless finish on the 747-400.

These stages included the grey undercoat, special white metallic paint, red tail masking and spraying, engine masking and spraying, graphic application of dots, application of Virgin Atlantic lettering, application of Virgin on tailfin, Flying Lady graphic applied to body, lacquer protection of plane and final detailing and finishing.

Once this project had been completed successfully Start JudgeGill was commissioned to update the livery for the whole of the Virgin Atlantic fleet of aircraft including the Airbus A320-200, Airbus A340-600 and the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Onsite photography in Schiphol