One thing I have become sensitive to is the ability to recognize a logo or picture on a billboard. There was a billboard for the National Guard that I passed on a daily basis and it took about 30 passes before I realized that the picture was looking at the front of an Abrams tank. Also, a billboard that is too busy or has too much information to read doesn't do me any good when I have to spend too much time trying to read it at speed. Then there is the one for a sporting goods store that doesn't even indicate what town the store is in. Simple and distinctive are sometimes better than putting too much 0f a story in them. A lot of it depends on where the logo is going to be used and how long people will have to look at it. The Ma Bell logo above is instantly recognizable while the Denver Nuggets is hard to read quickly. Clarity and contrast in coloring help me a lot. For the Lakers the purple lettering on the orangeish background of the basketball is much easier to see than the white "Denver" and the orange "Nuggets" on the blue background. Another thing that caught me off guard was when I designed a logo for my brother's company and while it looked good, when he went to put decals on the side of his trucks, the font size was too small for the door (regulations) and they had to alter the logo to get the lettering large enough to comply with the regulations. I was unaware of those regulations and so did not think that far ahead when I designed the logo. I designed it because he didn't want to spend lots of money on getting someone with a clue to do it.
I knew of the plane before but when I saw your post about it I googled it and found this. They did a nice job for sure. Regards, Kevin