Gareth Morgan organised a flag design competition, because he felt the government competition wasn’t delivering on this respect because the design brief wasn’t clear. So he created his own design brief and threw in some prize money to flush out some genuine designers. The competition attracted just under 1,000 entries and as a result the diversity of entries in the government process has also improved.
The brief from Gareth was the the design needed to:
1. Reflect a clear vision of who we are as people of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
2. Respond to and articulate our indigenous culture, heritage, our land and sense of place, our distinctiveness in the world.
3. Express our unique identity in a sophisticated manner through symbolism, style, form and composition.
4. Demonstrate understanding of the flag in context: legibility and materiality in multiple scales; movement in the display environment; clarity and strength of recognition in visually complex situations.
5. Represent our contemporary nation by being inclusive, innovative, and challenging convention.
I subbmitted two entires with similar graphic elements, but differenting use of colour, resulting in quite different feelings and messages coming out of them. Below are these entries.
