Interview: Dave Clark

In an ongoing series of interviews relating to the New Zealand flag process, I recently asked Dave Clark some questions about the design of the All Blacks silver fern and his thoughts on the New Zealand flag.

With his name on the door, Dave is the Principle of Dave Clark Design. From the studio site:

Dave has been practising as a designer in New Zealand and Australia for over 30 years. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honored Associate of Auckland University of Technology, and several-times-President of the NZ Designers Institute. Dave recently received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Designers Institute of New Zealand for his work in furthering New Zealand’s design culture.

The All Blacks have long worn the silver fern as a symbol of New Zealand, and thus in this rather sporting mad country it has become one of our most recognisable icons. Multiple sports-teams, our military, businesses and organisations have taken the humble cyathea dealbata and created fern logos to embroider on shirts, adorn trucks, stationery, government departments and now there’s a flag process underway with many submissions touting the merits of a silver fern.

With a significant number of ferns appearing on flags I thought it would be interesting to find out from Dave, the designer of the current All Black logo, the history of the mark and his thoughts on the flag process.

Q&As

Dan (DN): Can you provide some background on the process you took to design the All Blacks silver fern?

Dave (DC): I used to play rugby for Ponsonby with well-known All Black Andy Haden, and he had talked to the NZRFU about being able to register their famous symbol, to make it registrable and able to be trademarked. He asked me to design the symbol that would enable them to do this in 1986.

DN: How long / how many iterations did it take? What was the approval process like? How many people were involved in the design process?

DC: I was the only one designing the mark. Nobody else was involved. I spent a long time researching it, getting a naturalist at Auckland Zoo to show me the correct plant, I also researched the historical usages, the way it had been used in the history of the country. After I had got a good idea of the background, I started designing. It took about three months to work through hundreds of iterations. I found it very hard to come up with something that looked different enough from the many other designs that existed. In the end I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea. This was to use the elongated triangle idea of the overall shape as the internal shape of the fronds, to make it more of geometric shape than a representation. I had done some earlier experimentation when I was at Art School along these lines. I rushed to my drawing board and within about an hour I had sketched out the whole thing, which I’ve still got.

DN: Why do you think the silver fern has such an important place in New Zealand’s history and subsequent usage in our graphic design language?

DC: Ferns aren’t unique to NZ, and were used a lot in British folk art in early Victorian times. However, they’re so much of the natural landscape here that it’s almost inevitable they’d be used.

DN: Can you share some of what you know about the history of the silver fern and it’s usage?

DC: The NZRFU Silver Fern seems to have become a national symbol when Kiwis want to quickly express their nationality. I must have seen it tattooed on at least ten or fifteen people.

DN: Are there any other comments about the experience designing the All Blacks silver fern you would like to share?

DC: I’m a bit surprised about other people using it or claiming it. The NZ Cricket team logo appeared in a very similar format shortly after the NZRFU Fern appeared. Another design company entered my design as their own several years ago in ‘The Best Awards’ and got a ‘Bronze’ for it. They still have it on their website.

DN: What do you think about the use of the silver fern as an option for our flag? Does it link us to the origins of the ferns usage with our military and our sporting history? Is this a good or bad connection to make?

DC: Makes sense. Inevitably strong symbols like this accrue negative links as well as positive.

DN: What do you think about the number of submissions using the Southern Cross? Is this a symbol that is unique enough to New Zealand? (It is in use on six flags including NZ).

DC: No, I don’t think its unique enough.

Thanks again to Dave for taking time to answer these questions. Hopefully they provide an interesting view on the background of the design of the All Blacks silver fern.

If you’re after more information about the silver fern, like it’s first usage as a symbol in New Zealand and other related trivia, the following links provide some in-depth research and history.

History Geek: The Silver Fern

NZ Design History: Designs On Flags

Wikipedia: Cyathea Dealbata (The Silver Fern)

Te Ara: Ferns In New Zealand Culture

Te Ara: New Zealand Identity