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Brussels Airlines unveiled a new logo and livery in November 2021 as part of its Reboot Plus transformation, after a pandemic that forced it to cut its workforce by a quarter and its fleet by around 30 percent. Business Traveller reported the details: the dotted b on the logo and tailfins was replaced by dots of different sizes meant to represent the diversity of customers, the wordmark moved to a more modern font with brussels larger and stacked above airlines, and the signature red and blue were deepened.

Head of marketing Michel Moriaux explained the emphasis to VRT: Brussels Airlines stays Brussels Airlines, but Brussels is now bigger, to stress the hub at Brussels Airport and the ambition to be a national flag carrier. The new tagline was You're in good company.

The launch did not go smoothly. VRT reported that around a hundred staff protested at the hangar where the first plane in the new livery was shown, turning their backs on management and criticising how money was being spent after restructuring and temporary unemployment.

Then came the twin. RTBF reported that Polish news portal Gazeta.pl had pointed out its own logo: nine red spheres of different sizes forming a square. The old Brussels Airlines b was made of fourteen spheres; the new one has nine, also forming a square. Moriaux said the company had worked with a specialist agency on trademark searches, that no logo is 100 percent unique, and that what matters legally is the risk of consumer confusion.

He has a point; nobody will book a flight on a Polish news site by mistake. But the episode exposes the design's weakness. The old dotted b was odd and memorable. Rearranged into a tidy grid, the dots became generic enough to belong to someone else already.