Early on, Michael Smythe made the case for his version of Gordon Walters’ koru paintings.
Beare Design crowdsourced this ugly, but not too far off one of the finalists, design.
Soon, Gareth Morgan put up $20,000 to incentivise some good design.
And this one, Red Peak’s less-successful little sibling, won.
Our half-time round-up before the submissions closed.
Design podcaster Roman Mars, via Jonah Chang, TEDTalked to us (i.e. the world) about what makes a great (and a terrible) flag.
When the longlist was revealed, Holly Bagge talked to a panel member and the designer of one of the finalists about the whole thing.
Five of Designworks chief executive Sven Baker’s designs made the longlist but when none made the final four, he made some good looking wine out of his unchosen designs.
Elly Strang went deep into the world of flag retail. Will the sales of the current flag predict a victory for old faithful?
Spuriously related, but this guy who designed a few okayish NZ flags also designed these beautiful Star Wars flags.
PatPattrick Smellie weighed in, saying that whichever flag we chose, it didn’t really matter. People always get all riled up about rebranding only for the new branding to quickly become background noise.
Henry Oliver started out with some reasonable process-based analysis, but then went way too far on the whole Red Peak thing, comparing the handsome underdog to Omaru’s favourite son (and honorary doctorate), Richie McCaw, who at that point had only won a single world cup.
Someone from Blunt Umbrellas read the above referenced post and sent Henry an umbrella so, of course, he wrote about that too.
Michael Smythe the called the whole thing a “flawed, dishonest pantomime“.
Pattrick Smellie weighed in, saying that whichever flag we chose, it didn’t really matter. People always get all riled up about rebranding only for the new branding to quickly become background noise.
Then, recently, Jill Brinsdon and Michael Smythe again decried the whole process, with Smythe calling it a “negation of professional design” and Brinsdon unable to imagine a worse process, asking “Why aren’t we protecting our country’s brand as ferociously as we teach our corporates to?”
Which will win? (Just kidding, it’ll be the old one, right? The broad coalition between the conservatives who don’t want change and the “design elite” whose favourite was ditched somewhere in the process, will beat out the less-broad coalition of Key-loyalists, Lockwood-lovers, and those who just want change and any change will do.)
So… ‘till next time, flag debate. We’ll miss you (and your clickbaiting).
(Just kidding.)
