Wednesday, August 12, 2015

New Zealand wants to change its flag!

Wow, this is big. New Zealand is rebranding - seriously. When some countries tried to change a logo and miserably failed (hello Poland!), the Kiwis (New Zealanders) want to change the flag outright. You see, one cannot blame them, the old one was very close to the Australian flag (seriously, would you want to mistake one for the other at the Olympics), had a Union Jack flag to indicate its colonialist past, had no reference to New Zealand being where Lord Of The Rings was shot (sorry, I added this one!), and fankly was outright boring on many levels.
There are 40 options for the Kiwis to choose from. They are present above in the chart, they have strong references to the inclusiveness of New Zealand as a nation, have a lot of options with black in them (reference to the All Blacks rugby team which is the pride and joy of the nation), include Maori influenced curvatures, silver fern leaves which is prominent on many levels in the Kiwi culture.
It would be interesting to see which design will win.
For a while now, the French have toyed with the idea of changing the Marseillaise lyrics, this seems a demure effort compared to changing a full flag, so all I can say is "Haere nga tama a te fatherland" (this according to Google translate means "allez enfants de la patrie" in Maori!).
 

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