Interview: Thomas Le Bas

Continuing with the series of interviews I’ve been adding to the site, I asked designer Thomas Le Bas some questions this week.

Le Bas is the brains behind flagpost.nz, another Design & Democracy project initiative from Massey University. Built in collaboration with Springload, the site added the abiltiy to discuss, vote and annotate flag submissions of which the official site didn’t allow. The site also integrated flagtest.nz.

I’ve spent much of the process talking to Thomas, sharing articles, opinions, and providing feedback, so thought it would be interesting to document his views and experiences.

Q&As

Dan (DN): What is your Masters project and thesis about? It’s not “actually” about flags right, so how does it relate to the New Zealand flag consideration project?

Thomas (TL): As a designer that specialises in visual communication I certainly have an interest in the New Zealand flag, but the Masters has evolved to be about more than that. What I have been exploring with my research is how to facilitate a public design process that empowers the public. The goal being to get them to collaborate together, explore and contribute to discussion, and ultimately try make that engagement have impact on the outcome of the process. In short, Flagpost looked at empowering New Zealanders to work together on their own identity, connecting design process and solutions to people’s own values of national identity.

DN: Did you set out to create the flagpost.nz site, or did that come about from research and seeing how the official process unfolded?

TL: Flagpost came out of research, understanding (and foreseeing) the context, and development of ideas to explore the topic through design. The main catalyst was probably seeing that the official Flag Consideration Project was offering the “illusion of inclusion” through their standfor.nz public engagement initiative, and simply a lack of empowerment and two-way dialogue with design itself.

DN: How has flagpost.nz been recieved? Do you feel it’s successfully contributed to the process?

TL: The reception has been surprisingly positive. Given the amount of negativity on the standfor.nz platform I was thinking Flagpost might get the same. But I think the fact that Flagpost offered a more constructive space and discourse was directed at flag design, the platform didn’t act as a channel for backlash. As for contribution, I think it has helped some get feedback on their designs and engage with the idea of meaning and values in their designs more. My Masters so far has certainly opened my eyes to other perspectives and ideas, and has even influenced my own design process. Sadly, I wish there had been some opportunity to present my learnings and insights to the Flag Consideration Panel themselves.

DN: If you had the chance, what would you have wanted to share with the Flag Consideration Panel?

TL: It would have been nice to be able to present my process and research, but I think more so being able to present the findings from Flagpost. After all, it was these kinds of insights that I think would have been valuable to their process and could have offered some impact from the public engagement Flagpost had. But hey, maybe they’ve been using Flagpost all along and I just don’t know.

DN: How has your Masters project been received by the media? Have you felt their coverage and reporting on your work and the official process has been appropriate / ideal?

TL: Positive, but as always the more the merrier. I think Flagpost struggled to make that point of difference. It seemed to have a more nuanced purpose that was hard to communicate to the media and public—especially when media preferred the whacky and piss-take designs to the more meaningful and plausible ones offered by the public.

DN: Do you think the other last-minute sites that popped up using the NZ Flag API to vote and rank flags (for example: picking from two poorly designed flags and only being able to vote for one) without meaningful discussion added to the noise and was symbolic of what people wanted? The “tinder for flags” experience?

TL: I had consciously stayed away from the ‘tinder for flags’ idea. It had definitely come up in development, but ultimately it is a very shallow experience for both the public and for the selection process. I’m yet to delve deeper into research around these kinds of approaches, but essentially good design isn’t just found through democratic voting. Flagpost looked to offer more texture through the discussion space and tagging. It wasn’t always about the votes.

DN: What do you make of the official process and how submissions were collated and presented by the flag.govt.nz team?

TL: Collation and presentation seemed smooth, but I think it was the exploration and engagement aspect that was lacking—which is precisely what Flagpost looked to try do better. In fact, earlier in the year we pitched an initiative that would have sat in the space of public engagement and inclusion, to the Flag Consideration Project (prior to the Flagpost concept). This was sadly declined and Clemenger BBDO’s standfor.nz was what came out in the end. However, tools like flagtest.nz were a fantastic addition to the experience of Flagpost. It’s a pity more like this wasn’t offered from the official process to enable the public to test designs more rigorously, but my feeling is that it’s mostly a timing issue.

DN: I also attempted to get flagtest.nz included or intergrated with the official site, but unfortuntely that offer was declined and didn’t happen either.

DN: Do you think design has been involved at an appropriate level throughout the process (for example, not having designers represented on the panel)? Do you think this has impacted the results and selections in the “long-list”?

TL: Big disappointment here, especially given the results of the long list. I had a rather optimistic outlook on the Panel and their selection process, despite the lack of a design/vexillology expert. All along they said there would be design and flag expertise consulted —even the Designer’s Institute of New Zealand was apparently involved— but I’m really disappointed at the quality of the selection. I now have doubts about the rigour of the selection process and how much any designer or expert advice was taken into account.

DN: How do you think the roadshows and public consultation has helped? Do you think the “stand for” campaign helped shape submissions?

TL: I think the roadshows and meetings were needed to offer alternative engagement opportunities to the wider community. It is sad that the numbers were low and the media were able to exploit that, but I think more could have been done to get more aware of those events. I’m still unsure myself how the ‘What do you stand for?’ impacted on the process. Maybe it inspired people in designing flags, maybe it helped the panel make a selection—but I had difficulty connecting the arbitrary responses and the resulting word-cloud to anything visual, let alone flag related.

DN: How different is the New Zealand “long-list” to the process in Fiji with their variations (amalgamations) of ideas?

TL: Despite Fiji’s amalgamation approach (and the consistent use of their blue), they actually have far more variety I think. There are a few in there that show some influence of vexillological understanding, or as I would put it, speak in a flag language.

DN: What do you mean by “a flag language”?

TL: I suppose what I mean is the conventions and elemental consistency of flags—specifically national flags in this case. And I think this goes beyond the general principles of good flag design. Consider the differences between city flags; which host a troublesome amount of illegible seals, corporate flags; which are often just their logo on a stick, and the flag of South Africa. The flag of South Africa, and many other national flags, exercise an extreme level of abstraction and reduction that often results in pure geometric forms to express larger concepts. Something I’ve also noticed myself is that in national flags there is a lack of curves beyond that of circles or those that can be explained by simple math—what does that suggest?

DN: You re-organized the submissions to illustrate their similarity, was this responding to the lack of different ideas represented?

TL: Absolutely. It was clear that the panel had categorised them like this themselves, but mixed them up to present them to the public. To me it showed two things: there was a narrow range of symbolism they considered worthy, or at least weren’t interested in taking risk. But it also shows a lack of understanding for what this part of the national conversation could be about. Instead of giving us an array of themes and narratives (concepts!) they have unveiled shallow and poorly finessed options that differ on colour and which of three symbols is used (details). As a professional designer, I would not be presenting to a client variations in detail—otherwise that’s what the conversation becomes about, not concepts and meaning.

DN: How do you rate the panel’s performance and selection of submissions for the long-list?

TL: Poorly. Surely expert consultation would have at least picked up on the issues (and I don’t mean legally) that might arise out of having logos in the flag selections, or a bastardised Union Jack flag—the flag of another country! Even sketchier is the fact that you have 5 Kyle Lockwood flags, 6 Sven Baker flags, Gareth Morgan’s $20,000 winner, and the winner of an online crowdsourced competition. To me that suggests some unfairness and foul play in the selection, and simply a lack of design understanding.

DN: What do you make of the Gareth Morgan’s designmyflag.nz competition? Note: Le Bas submitted a design that has an unfortunate similarity to the official “winner”.

TL: Gareth’s competition was both good and bad, but I’m glad it happened. Through my Masters research I found that national identity tends to be controlled or swayed by those in power; Government, business interests, and the media—and Gareth has some of that. I was conflicted with this because I had wanted to empower the public. I was also werey of the fact that it was a competition ultimately judged by him.

Nonetheless, the positives were there. The competition gave design some monetary value—something that the official process completely lacked and ought to be recognised as having value (I remember Prof. John Burrows even saying at the Wellington meeting, “All the designer gets is eternal fame and glory”). It was also great seeing a brief used in his process that really helped give designs a direction and conceptual foundation, despite this being ‘Gareth’s brief’. The competition also pointed out the importance of designers and visual communicators on the judging Panel (despite him completely disregarding their selection). In the end, a valuable exercise.

Regarding my entry though, it certainly brought to my attention the lack of recognition for similarity of designs and ideas. I would have thought that if this were an open process, these kinds of things would be recognised; both in Gareth’s competition and the official process.

DN: What’s next for flagpost.nz and your Masters project? Do you have any other thoughts to share?

TL: What’s next is currently up in the air. I think the long list has thrown the project off a bit, but that could be a good thing. I was sort of expecting a large enough variety in the long list to engage the public more on the conceptual qualities and ideas, but I think that is much harder to do now. We will just have to watch this space. I do however look forward to seeing what the final four are, but more so whether we get any deeper insight into the selection process and thinking of the Panel.

Thanks again to Thomas for taking time to answer these questions. Hopefully they provide an interesting view on his Masters project and flagpost.nz site.