In the words of June Fraser, president of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers: "National airlines change their identities at their own peril." She's right, and yet they do.

JAL's elegant crane has been phased out and replaced by something so awful that every JAL plane deserves to be concealed under a black tarp: a giant, blood red "rising splotch" oozing across the tailfin.

Over at Northwest it's almost as bad. Landor's brilliant NW has been bastardized into a lazy, meaningless circle. Compared to the one it replaces, this new device is so brutally reductive that it's almost painful to gaze upon.

Down in Atlanta the news is slightly better. When the powers at Delta instituted a makeover about five years ago, the widget was given a rather unfortunate tweak, morphed into a kind of frumpy, half-melted triangle. It's seldom that a company will revert to a prior scheme, but that's just what happened at the world's second-largest airline. After protests against the widget's needless overhaul, the old one has returned.

Well done, but Delta's problem isn't its trademark widget. Instead, it's the tail. Use of the word "problem" here is maybe a curious one, as admittedly the tricolor banner -- something of a cross between a shower curtain and the flag of Luxembourg -- is colorful, innovative and frankly a real eye catcher. But that's just it: it's all show and no substance -- fancy for the sake of being fancy.

Although the tail could be much, much worse, it's symptomatic of an industry-wide scourge. The application of textures, complex patterns, and other quirky novelties is becoming excessive. They tend to be very nice, in and of themselves, but ultimately there's no true conveyance of identity. It's easy to marvel at the furl and flow of the Delta shower curtain, but there's something about it that screams temporary. Ten years from now, it's bound to be replaced by an entirely different palette, and the drive for recognition must begin all over again.

Consider the new styling of Avianca, revealed as part of the airline's emergence from bankruptcy earlier this year. Colombia's national carrier is one of the three oldest airlines in existence. But what, exactly, is evoked by this? Nothing, best anybody can tell, beyond the possible self-satisfaction of the artists.

Likewise, here's the latest rendition of Portugal's national airline, TAP Portugal. The acronym stands for Transportes Aéreos Portugueses, and thus the full and formal name translates loosely to "Portuguese Air Transport Portugal." I'd be willing to grant the carrier a nonsense name if only it hadn't simultaneously insisted on this revolting new mishmash of a livery. How to say this exactly, but every TAP airplane now looks like a flying department store.

Of course, a department store is one thing. I'd like to know why Air Canada chose to abandon its classy colors in order to paint up its aircraft in the pallid blue tiling of an airport men's room.

Importantly though, and showing something akin to Delta's good sense, Air Canada at least had the presence of mind to hang on to its encircled maple leaf logo, visible in the preceding photograph on the forward fuselage above the windows. Aeroflot gets a mention here too. Overall, the Russian carrier's newest paint job displays a hideous overuse of colors and motion, but scores major points for retaining its winged hammer and sickle, virtually unchanged since the 1940s.

With the widget in mind, retooling a heretofore well-known trademark is best done judiciously. Delta's old competitor, Eastern Airlines, was one carrier whose tinkering with tradition proved successful. Eastern's final logo, which at first glance looked to be little more than a winking blue and white circle, was an adaptation of the carrier's decades-old falcon mascot -- and, in a modernist sort of way, a beauty.

Opposite case in point, United Parcel Service. The venerable UPS logo was the work of Paul Rand, a legendary design guru who also did work for Westinghouse and IBM. Click here to behold its transformation. Sadly departed is the bow-tied box, which to me was a wonderful, heart-and-soul manifestation of the company's core mission: delivering packages. What we get instead is yet more ultra-slick corporate anonymity. If we didn't know better, UPS could be a bank or insurance company.

"I call that the Generic Meaningless Swoosh Thing," says Amanda Collier, a 10-year graphic design veteran who lives in Beverly Hills, Calif. "The GMST is what happens when any corporation gathers senior management, their internal creative department, and a design agency in order to develop a new logo. The managers will talk about wanting something that shows their company is 'forward thinking' and 'in motion,' and no fewer than three of them will reference Nike, inventors of the original swoosh. The creative types smile, nod, secretly stab themselves with their X-Acto knives, and shit out variations on a motion theme until everyone gets tired of arguing about it. It's the lowest common denominator of commercial design."

We presume Air-India relies on that centaur to suggest movement, speed and strength. But it's a two-step process: You instantly recognize the virtues of the centaur, but you also have to ask yourself why he's there and not somebody -- or something -- else. Collier's GMST does the thinking for you. Why bother with some complex symbolism when a simple brush command in Photoshop can take care of it?

Collier also points out the madly overwrought logo of Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines (formerly Midwest Express). Note those motion lines -- and I think I see a touch of art deco in there somewhere. I also see what might be either a bronze boomerang or perhaps a gob of Wisconsin cheddar. How very, um, regional, though it's definitely better than a decal of an overweight Packers fan in denim shorts.

Not unexpectedly, what we find in the end is a state of constant change. And while it's easy to be disappointed by the latest rash of poorly rendered ideas, it's foolish to advocate we cling to every timeworn trademark. The shame is having lost a few of the best when they still maintained dignity and freshness. Logos evolve, and well they should. The trick is allowing the age to speak to its aesthetic, and not vice versa. In other words, don't go messing with it because you think you're supposed to.

"That's the horrible thing," Collier adds. "Exactly when a given design begins to fix itself properly in the public consciousness, it will be revised!"

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