On my flight over about a month ago, I flew Swiss airline.  I was bored and cannot help but notice their consistent use of a graphic in most of their printed matter.

It is a short horizontal bar (or a dash) placed under the title of something.  I think the horizontal bar resembles a cursor.  Some of you may remember the command line of Microsoft’s DOS, or BASIC programming.  (Nowadays, the cursor is a blinking vertical bar, which avoids any confusion with an underline.)  This short horizontal bar is always placed at the beginning of a new line, and to me the graphic suggests a blinking cursor or a bullet point that invites one to input a command.  I do not know the rationale behind the design.  Perhaps the airline wants us to think that they are always at the passengers’ command.  It is certainly modern (when used with Helvetica, duh), and I think it adds a sense of being in the information age.

I said the flight was boring, right ?

Incidentally, as I am posting this, Sue is flying over from NY to join me in Switzerland.