Year 10 Design & Technology Students Explore Swire’s Aviation Archive

Year 10 Design & Technology students recently had the rare opportunity to see Swire’s near 200-year archive – an exclusive facility typically closed to the public! Where aviation meets history – this trip was a unique opportunity to discover history frozen in time.

Located in Tai Koo, the Swire Archive exhibits their rich history in a stunning fashion, offering meaningful insight into their Coca-Cola operations, Swire properties, shipping logistics, and the star of their show, Cathay Pacific Airways.

The visit aligns with the students’ “Airline Rebrand” project, which tasks the students with reconceptualising the branding identity and products of a flag carrier airline. By engaging directly with archival material, students gain inspiration to fuel their creative processes, and insight into how design choices intersect with cultural values at a given time. Senior Archivist Matthew Edmondson revitalised the historical items by curating an astonishing collection of works including flight logs, uniforms, photographs, and models. Matthew not only guided the students throughout the archive – informing them of each item’s historical significance – but also delivered a coherent presentation on archivism – an inspirational guide to a career. Delving deeper into the nuances of Swire’s history, the students entered an environmentally controlled room featuring delicate artefacts dating back nearly 200 years!

By examining aircraft blueprints, menus from the 1940s, in-flight magazines, amenity kits, advertisement campaigns, and many more items on display, Cathay Pacific’s branding evolution provided students with significant inspiration for how they would lay out graphics, rebrand items, intertwine culture, and professionally convey their redeveloped airline identity to cater for a potential consumer. As students begin to consider the unlimited opportunities that aviation delivers, the visit serves as a substantial framework motivating students to approach the rebrand with precision and significance.

Behind all the successful displays of unprecedented work throughout Cathay Pacific’s history, however, were the design concepts and ideation processes that never made it to production! The students laid their eyes on captivating works such as cabin crew uniforms that were especially bold such as in the 1990s, yet they were outperformed by other designs – an intuitive reminder that design and ideation is a creative and cyclical process. Other fascinating and memorable facts include Cathay Pacific’s first inaugural flight from Hong Kong to Sydney on their iconic Douglas DC-3 aircraft titled “Betsy”, which took 32 hours and included several refuelling stops!

The Swire archive visit was an incredibly meaningful trip for the Year 10 Design and Technology students. Whether the excursion served to motivate and fuel creative processes, or to inspire those who aspire to enter the aviation industry, the trip offered firsthand exposure to aviation operations, bridging theoretical learning with real-world aviation practices. AISHK extends our most grateful and heartfelt thanks to the staff at the Swire archives for their warm hospitality and the privilege to view such inspiring works. 

Carlos Moya, Year 10