At a time when love for airlines was at an all-time low, Southwest Airlines decided it was time to bring Heart back into the travel experience. To show our most loyal Customers they meant more to us than just our bottom line, we wanted to do something special. To thank them for flying with us, we created an immersive online experience that turned the time they spent in the air with us into personalized works of art. Over a million unique experiences, where every detail connected them more deeply to our brand. We called it the Heart of Travel.

Southwest is an airline built on Heart. While other airlines step over dollars to pick up pennies, Southwest knew that giving its Customers something without any expectations in return was a clear demonstration their Heart.

We worked with digital artist Joshua Davis to develop a visual system that we then used to transform flights into brushstrokes. We developed an algorithm that dynamically translated multiple sets of data including personal information, flight information, and weather patterns into personalized artwork.

Number of flights affect stroke density. Length of flights affect stroke radius. Time of year, and even time of day affects colors. Every piece of personal data affects the artwork, ensuring no two pieces are the same.

But it is not enough to simply serve up a beautiful image. We found anomalies in Customers’ travel patterns to display memorable moments with the help of a rule-based, WebGL animation. When the animation finishes, users can interact with 3D models of their artwork by scrolling across a timeline of all their flights, diving deeper into the memories they made with us.

For each piece of art, we created a first-of-its-kind experience. Using binaural audio, we built a custom sound engine that created a three-dimensional, personalized music score tied to each work of art. Human breaths were used to give an added layer of humanity. Each flight serves as another note in an aural tapestry. Each season has a unique tone, making every flight sound differently based on time of year.

On the website, after experiencing and exploring their artwork, users can download it in multiple forms to print and share with their network.

Initial launch was sent to 700,000 of Southwest’s most loyal Customers based on one year’s worth of flight information, identifying new recipients monthly to scale to tens of millions of recipients.

Initial launch was sent to 700,000 of Southwest’s most loyal Customers based on one year’s worth of flight information, identifying new recipients monthly. With a flight criteria of at least ten flights per year, the experience is set to scale to tens of millions of recipients, each getting their own unique Heart of Travel experience.