Along with thousands of other “designers”, I received an email yesterday with the news a “long-list” of forty flags had been announced.

Unfortunately none of my designs made the cut. Below is the letter from the panel:

10 August 2015

Dear Designer

Thank you for participating in the New Zealand Flag Consideration Project by suggesting an alternative flag design to the Panel. We were thrilled to receive more than 10,000 designs and greatly appreciate the effort people put into these.

Each design was assessed by all Panel members on the basis of flag design principles and what New Zealanders have said they are looking for in a design for our national flag.

Unfortunately, your design has not been selected for the long-list of alternative flag designs.

Many of the designs suggested were outstanding. However, the Panel has had to select a limited number of designs for active consideration during the next stages of its process. Legal due diligence is now being conducted on those designs as the Panel works towards its recommendation to Cabinet of four alternative flags for the public to vote on in the first referendum later this year.

The Panel’s decision on the long-list is final and it has released this list publicly. Thank you again for your contribution to this nationally significant process.

Yours sincerely
John Burrows (Chair)

I was rather surprised that the Flag Consideration Panel and their “advisors” had not already undertaken any “legal due diligence” before announcing these flags for consideration. That seems like something that would have been worthwhile before presenting this list. The use of the Tourism New Zealand logo one of the obvious legal issues to explore.

The other point to note is the comment that “each design was assessed by all Panel members on the basis of flag design principles…”. Based on 10,000+ submissions I find that increasingly hard to believe that all were reviewed with the same rigour. Especially as many of the forty flags are variations of the same idea or theme and in some cases arguably don’t adhere to the “common principles” and design guidelines previously published.

I’ll write something separately about my opinions on the “long-list” as I find the Flag Consideration Panel’s selection at first glance generally underwhelming and rather disappointing. As many pointed out on Twitter the makeup of the forty flags lacked variation:

‘Red Peak’ & ‘Wā kāinga’ are only two designs that don’t feature either koru/fern or stars.

— Chris McDowall (@fogonwater) August 10, 2015

Somewhat un-related, I decided against using this site to promote my designs (other than the two early parody submissions “Beautiful Beige” and “Our Southern Swanny”), so for posterity here’s a list of the forty designs that I submitted.

The irony was not lost on me that the number of submissions selected for the long-list is also forty! Even more ironic was the timing of the announcement yesterday as it coincided with the Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) Best Awards finalists being published. I was fortunately more successful in that competition with work I did with the team at Xero making this years awards.