07 · Amadeus · Editorial and motion

Making complexity easier to understand

Turning dense industry research into publications people actually read to the end.

Client: Amadeus IT and DMA Partners
Role: Art Director, Graphic and Motion Designer
Industry: Travel technology
Impact: +62% report read through
+3.5× average dwell time
15k+ downloads
Year: 2022

Overview

Research nobody reads is research nobody uses

Amadeus operates at the infrastructure layer of global travel. Working with DMA Partners, I helped turn complex industry research into editorial that is genuinely navigable.

I art directed and designed two flagship publications, Managed Travel 3.0 and Future Traveller Tribes 2030, alongside the motion work that carried the same ideas into video.

The goal was to spark imagination about tomorrow’s travel: how technology, sustainability and personalisation will reshape a journey. Not just to explain the future, but to let an audience feel it.

Approach

Three things doing the work

Editorial typography

A hierarchy strong enough that a reader can enter a spread anywhere and still know where they are.

Flat vector illustration

Used to simplify intricate travel systems, booking flows and behavioural insight without flattening the argument underneath.

Infographic storytelling

The data given a narrative shape, so a chart earns its page rather than decorating it.

Across both publications the constraint stayed the same: reduce the cognitive friction without oversimplifying the data holding it up.

The work

Two publications

Publication 01

Managed Travel 3.0

An insight from the inside. Approachable vector illustration used to make travel systems, booking flows and behavioural research legible, with motion carrying the same language into video.

The motion cut. Watch on Vimeo if the player does not load.

The Managed Travel 3.0 cover, two illustrated business travellers in an airport terminal with a city skyline behind the glass, under the title An insight from the inside. — The cover.

An illustration of a smartwatch receiving trip notifications from linked payment, concierge, social and booking services, beside a world map with hands holding phones showing travel confirmations in Spanish, Portuguese, French, English and Chinese. — One connected trip, in five languages.

Two ranked bar charts scoring traveller priorities from flight status updates down to trip sharing, beside the Amadeus Total Customer Experience diagram, a circle divided into data, insight and action. — Survey data and the vision diagram it fed.

A Managed Travel 3.0 spread with a full bleed blue page carrying a Henry Ford quote, facing an article page and an arc diagram showing the phases of Managed Travel from content through search to service. — The arc diagram, which carries the whole argument of the report.

A Managed Travel 3.0 spread opening Section 2, Technology the key to 3.0, with the smartwatch illustration facing the Future Traveller Tribes 2030 hexagon of six traveller personalities. — Section openers built around a single illustration.

A Managed Travel 3.0 spread on merchandising and consumerisation, with a full width chevron diagram tracing the traveller journey from inspire and shop through booking, check in, airport, on trip and post trip, each stage listing its opportunities. — The traveller journey, stage by stage, with what each one opens up.

Publication 02

Future Traveller Tribes 2030

Built with Frost and Sullivan. This one leaned on typographic hierarchy and persona led layouts, giving six traveller types enough room to become people rather than segments.

A Future Traveller Tribes spread opening Section 1, with a chart comparing annual spend on experiences against material goods, facing the hexagon naming the six tribes. — The six tribes, and the spending shift behind them.

A spread of pen portraits for the six traveller tribes, each a named individual with age and nationality, photographed inside a coloured triangle that forms a hexagon at the centre of the spread. — Six tribes turned into six named people.

A spread on types of travel experience, with a photographic still life of travel objects facing the trip cycle diagram, a ring running from inspire and shop through booking, airport, on trip and post trip. — The trip cycle, annotated stage by stage.

A spread on new sales channels, splitting inspiration channels, smartphone, tablet and virtual reality, from information channels, smartwatch, augmented reality glasses and service robots, each with its own vector illustration. — Inspiration against information, as the organising idea.

A spread profiling the Reward Hunters tribe, with columns on inspiration sources, personalisation and touchpoints, a purchasing behaviour matrix, and a photograph of a traveller surrounded by luxury travel objects. — One tribe in full, with its behaviour mapped as a matrix.

Impact

Why it mattered

An industry report only creates value if people engage with it. The work made large scale travel research clearer, faster to navigate and easier to retain, which is the whole return on commissioning it in the first place.

Credits

Client: Amadeus IT and DMA Partners
Creative director: David Mears
Copywriter: David Mears
Art direction and graphic design: Igor Dinuzzi