Introducing: #vexilLOLogy

There’s some seriously funny #nzflag submissions on the flag.govt.nz site. I think they deserve their own hashtag. Introducing:

#VexilLOLogy [vek-suh-LOL-uh-jee] — noun

1. the study of laughable flags.
2. the scientific art of tagging flag designs that are hilarious or, by extension, discovering anything interesting relating to flags that causes one to laugh out loud.

The word is a synthesis of the Latin word vexillum (“flag”), the Greek suffix -logia (“study”) and the internet slang acronym (“LOL”).

Definition based on the vexillology Wikipedia entry.

Terms & Conditions

With the launch of the submission process, the flag.govt.nz site was updated with the official terms and conditions for submitting a flag design for consideration.

The terms and conditions start off well with clear and concise language outlining the submission process with obvious points such as:

You confirm that each Flag Design you suggest, including each element of each Flag Design, is:

a. an original work made by you and no one else, except to the extent you disclose otherwise under clause 12;
b. not copied; and
c. not illegal, offensive or derogatory.

So far, so good. Next up, the terms surrounding the consideration of the designs by the panel. In this section they allow for any design to be considered, so it is not necessarily a requirement that the design be submitted as part of the official process:

The Panel and the Crown each reserve the right to consider other flag designs suggested before, during or after the Suggestion Period.

As I quoted in the post about the “Terms Of Reference”, there is room for a design company to be engaged outside of the open submissions process. It will be interesting to see if this happens, and if so, in what capacity the design industry is involved.

The next section outlines what happens if you’re fortunate enough to have your flag shortlisted. It turns out you might have the GCSB investigating you. As the terms and conditions delicately put it, you’ll be required to “submit to checks”, of which they provide a couple of examples:

If your Flag Design is selected as one of a shortlist of preferred designs to be subjected to a due diligence process (Shortlisted Designs) by the Panel, you and any other author of your Flag Design acknowledge that you may be required to submit to checks, for example intellectual property checks and a criminal conviction check. Any information obtained during or as a result of these checks may be taken into account by the Panel and may exclude your Flag Design from further consideration.

This makes sense and allows the Government to avoid any X Factor or Bachelorette type of embarrassment by not properly vetting those who have submissions shortlisted.

The next section of the terms and conditions outlines that you’ll “grant the Crown an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, sub-licensable licence to use, copy, modify, adapt and/or publish your Flag Design for any purposes the Crown sees fit in relation to the selection of a new flag for New Zealand.” Goodbye rights. This means they’ll have the ability to:

Alter or amend your Flag Design, merge or combine your Flag Design with any other flag design or use elements of your Flag Design in another flag design.

Hard not to worry about that clause. If you submit a design and it gets shortlisted you could end up seeing it ‘merged’ with another submission. Maybe you forgot to add the Southern Cross, well the Government could fix that for you an create a Silver Fern / Southern Cross hybrid, presenting our two must commonly submitted symbols, regardless of their suitability. I joke… Although this could be used to alter a design, it might only be required to simply perfect a submission for production and manufacturing.

Alongside merging or combining your design you also grant the Government the ability to publish your design in any medium throughout the process. This also covers any future use after the referendums. Basically, if your flag makes the cut, you’ll have no say in how it is presented or used.

The following section on intellectual property and moral rights is interesting as it explains what you’ve waiving:

While the Crown will acknowledge authors as described in clause 13, by suggesting a Flag Design you hereby waive all of your moral rights arising from your Flag Design throughout the world, to the extent that you may lawfully do so, and you agree not to assert any of your moral rights, and to provide all consents required by the Crown, in relation to the use and publication of your Flag Design…

The section continues by outlining where and how your submission can be used. It’s no surprise the Government is making it very clear that you will have no legal ownership of your design, as well as many other clauses that protect their interests. Considering the circumstances, any open submission process requires all-encompassing terms and conditions, and that’s what these set out.

One of better clauses in the terms and conditions is the re-assignment of rights that you can request if your design is not selected:

If your Flag Design is chosen as a Shortlisted Design but is not ultimately chosen to be the next New Zealand flag, then you may request that the Crown re-assigns the rights transferred under clause 15 so that you regain ownership of all rights you had before you suggested your Flag Design.

Finally, if things go pear-shaped the crown reserves the right to cancel the process. Always a good idea to have a get out of jail card…

The Crown reserves the right to vary or cancel the Flag Consideration Project at any time.

— https://www.govt.nz/browse/engaging-with-government/the-nz-flag-your-chance-to-decide/terms-and-conditions/

Terms Of Reference

Over the last few weeks several questions have been floated about how the Flag Consideration Panel will be reviewing the designs and what their responsibilities will be.

When submissions have been excluded from the gallery on the flag.govt.nz site, email responses refer to the “terms of reference” the panel will be using. From what I can tell the “terms of reference” they are referring to are the “guiding principles” in the original cabinet paper appendix. I’ve previously posted a summary of the Guiding Principles, but thought it timely to provide a bit more detail.

Interestingly there is a section about the approach the panel can take.

The research may include the following approaches (within the available budget):

1. surveying;
   
2. commissioning a design agency to create a range of potential designs, and promulgating these for public feedback; and
   
3. commissioning legal assistance to complete domestic and international due diligence on the suitability and availability of proposed designs.

I don’t recall seeing the note about “commissioning a design agency” the first time I reviewed the cabinet papers. This is rather fascinating and I’d love to hear if a design company has been approached. Let me know if you have…

Also in the appendix is a section outlining the responsibilities of the panel and the requirements for their report.

The FCP’s report is expected to include the following:

1. a summary of the processes used to engage with the public;
   
2. any common themes in designs and suggestions from the public;
   
3. any common design elements in flag designs submitted by the public;
   
4. discussion of the process by which the group has narrowed down the selection of alternative designs;
   
5. description of the work the FCP has undertaken to ensure the alternative designs meet accepted design standards and that there are no legal or other impediments to their use;
   
6. recommendations for a reasonable number (5-6) of alternative designs for inclusion in a referendum, together with the current New Zealand Flag.

I can’t wait to see that report and what they determine are “common themes” and what submissions will “meet accepted design standards”.

— http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/publications/nzflag-process-cabinet-paper-october2014.pdf

Local Media Coverage

Since late 2014 there’s been a lot of local media coverage surrounding the proposed redesign of the New Zealand flag. So far it’s falling into four distinct types of stories:

1. Polls: Polling results and the number of New Zealanders for or against the change.
2. Money: Coverage of the cost and information surrounding the process / referendums.
3. Submissions: Design critiques and flag reviews.
4. Opinions: General coverage and opinions.

I’ll summarise a few articles and reflect on the impact the media is having throughout the process thus far.

Polls

Several media companies in New Zealand have been busy polling and have produced numerous headlines documenting how many people are against the flag change. TVNZ published these articles: “Three quarters of Kiwis against changing flag” and “Two-thirds against changing flag” in 2014 and most recently The New Zealand Herald published; “Flag poll message clear: Leave it alone”.

There’s clearly a lot of mileage in posting poll results and thus gaining page views (more advertising revenue) due to incensed New Zealanders clicking and commenting on these articles. These comments deserve an entire post documenting the wide range of opinions…

The last article by The Herald suggests from “750 eligible voters” only 25% of New Zealanders said yes and 75% said no to changing our flag. When asked about an alternative flag the results suggest a silver fern would be preferred:

The last article by The Herald suggests that of “750 eligible voters” only 25% said yes to changing the flag, compared to 75% that said no. When asked about an alternative flag the results suggest a silver fern would be preferred:

The silver fern was the front runner for an alternative flag in the Herald poll, preferred by 45 per cent. In second place was the Southern Cross with 18 per cent support.

The timing of the poll, and much of the media coverage surrounding it, aligned with the centennial ANZAC commemorations, as well as interviews with members of the RSA presenting their reasons for not wanting to change the flag.

Polls about changing our flag go way back and you can see a good overview on the New Zealand Flag Debate page on Wikipedia. In 2013 and 2014 polling saw the highest results voting for change. The Listener ran a poll on their site in March 2014 asking “Do you think the NZ flag design should be changed?” The poll was part of an article by Sally Blundell called, “A symbol solution” with live results suggesting 62% of people said “Yes, it’s time for a completely new look.” Information about how many people responded to the poll is unfortunately unavailable.

Despite that recent result from The Listener, you can easily make an informed guess that at this time the sentiment is very much “leave it alone”. What is unclear from all of the current polling is the makeup of the poll respondents. Would the results be different if it were just people under 30 responding? If we split the results by residents and citizens would there be a difference? Does a particular ethnicity in New Zealand want a new flag more than another?

Asking these additional questions (or having access to that data) would help to better determine who is represented in these polls and whether all of New Zealanders views are proportionally reflected in the results.

Money

It’s no surprise some of the first media coverage surrounding the process was dedicated to the cost of the referendums and the $640 per day payment the Flag Consideration Panel would be receiving.

That pales in comparison to the $25.7 million¹ estimated cost associated with the entire process. It’s hard to find an accurate break-down about how this cost will be allocated, although The New Zealand Herald article, ”Taxpayers’ $25m bill, even if flag stays”, does provide some detail:

The publicity blitz around selecting the new designs, which begins on Anzac Day next year, will cost $6.7 million, while the two referendums will cost $17.3 million. Other costs will take the overall bill to $25.7 million whether the flag is changed or not.

The cost of replacing existing flags, uniforms and government references to the existing New Zealand flag is estimated to be at least $2.69 million². For context (and this is not a criticism), that’s slightly less than making cycle trails in Northland.

TVNZ have several articles online about how the flag change is a “gross waste of money” and that it is “absolutely ridiculous”. This tone is representative of most of the coverage surrounding the cost of the flag process.

Responding to the debate about the cost, it has been interesting to see Sam Morgan tweeting his opinions:

Worried about spending $22m to change the flag? It is surely preferable to spending $22m and not changing the flag. #nzflag

— Sam Morgan (@samfromwgtn) May 12, 2015

Although he quotes a different amount (it is likely to be $25.7 million), it is worrying thought that spending this amount of money may indeed not see a change in flag. That shouldn’t be the reason for changing, however it a compelling one.

Morgan also puts the estimated cost into perspective with some rough sums on how the amount is only a fraction of what is spent in the New Zealand budget:

According to my calculations, the flag budget (~$22m) is about 9 hrs of our social security budget. #nzflag

— Sam Morgan (@samfromwgtn) May 20, 2015

Submissions

The New Zealand Herald ‘helpfully’ point out the flag will need to have “wow factor”. Surprisingly the first comment in response to the article nails it:

This is our national flag not some cheap advertising campaign, it needs dignity not wow factor. We look ridiculous enough on the world stage as it is.

I’ve yet to see a well articulated article from the major New Zealand news publications about design and the importance of it in the process. Let me know if I’ve missed something…

Many of the submissions need to be seriously critiqued, others easily disregarded. At this point none of the major media companies are reviewing specific concepts (other than the obvious parodies and child-like designs).

To be fair, The Listener and Radio New Zealand have stood out with more in-depth reporting on the process, but are yet to throughly review and critique the submissions. At the point of writing there are over 2000+ entries in the submission gallery which does make that hard work!

The majority of the local media coverage about the submissions has been similar to that of the international coverage with lists of flags, often those poorly designed.

You can see some of the local articles summarising submissions below:

TVNZ: One flag to rule them all: But which flag?

NZ Herald: Flag will change … but to this?

NZ Herald: Kiwis reveal their flag desires

Radio New Zealand: Best of flags, worst of flags

Radio Live: 20 Best and worst designs for new NZ flag

Opinions

One area of the media I’ve not touched on is Stuff Nation, a reader submitted “news” and community section of the stuff.co.nz site.

There have already been several posts about individual submissions and opinions on these designs. I’ll be reviewing designs separately, but most interesting is the platform this is providing for designs and entrepreneurial kiwis trying to promote their ideas.

One example of self-promotion is a post by Zolan Davis who writes about “Reimagining the New Zealand flag”. The post features two designs that have been submitted for consideration by the author, Union Tika, and Te Punga. For a more extensive list of Stuff Nation flag posts there’s an “Assignments” section of the site asking “What should be on New Zealand’s flag?” where many individuals are reviewing and promoting submissions.

Stuff is not alone in providing a media platform for people to promote their submissions. The New Zealand Herald has published an article by Michael Smythe entitled “A flag to stand out from the crowd” where he outlines his rationale and the background to his submission.

Ultimately anyone can promote their flag design, however I believe New Zealand media companies have a responsibility to remain impartial and fairly promote a wide range of options.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how the media coverage evolves as the Flag Consideration Panel starts to whittle the submissions down to four designs for the first referendum.

International Media Coverage

As the submissions continue to be loaded into the flag.govt.nz gallery, there’s been growing international coverage about the “designs”. The Guardian picked up on the process and published an article highlighting “15 Quirky Contenders”. It’s hard not to be embarrassed by such coverage, however pointing out how poor or “quirky” some of the designs are is important. It got worse though as The Guardian collated some of our other most recent international media coverage:

Remember, by way of context, this is a nation in which the prime minister admitted to pulling a woman’s ponytail, a man was convicted of attempting to take out women’s teeth during sex, a corpse on a gurney rolled out of a hearse and onto a highway, a pet sheep was stolen and spray painted with an Isis logo on one side and “420” on the other, a runner drank her own breast milk after getting lost in the bush, and a parochial swimming pool had a six-week ordeal with a “serial pooper”.

And that’s just in the past couple of months. How do you capture those eccentricities in shape and colour alone? These bloody legends gave it a decent stab.

BuzzFeed posted another listicle of “The 20 Best Designs For The New Zealand Flag”. Number 14: “Fush & Chups” is an extremely funny and clever concept, however I have less tolerance for some of the other submissions.

Both BuzzFeed and The Guardian are clearly having a laugh with these articles. Sadly there’s been little critical coverage internationally about the process. It seems it is much easier to post links to hilariously bad submissions than write in-depth articles on identity, culture, vexillology, and design.

I’ve collected some of the other articles the flag redesign process has being mentioned in below for posterity:

Vice: This Is What Happens When You Let New Zealanders Make Their Own Flag

Huffington Post: New Zealand Asked The Internet To Design A New Flag, And This Is What They Came Up With

BBC News: The colourful contenders for New Zealand’s new flag

RT: Kiwi bird vs. Union Jack: New Zealand suggests new national flag

Daily Mail: A robot Kiwi and sheep on a rainbow: After New Zealand government asks members of the public to submit designs for a new flag, we reveal the more unusual suggestions

The Star: Could this become New Zealand’s new flag?

The Australian: New Zealand flag: designs from the public flood in

CNBC: Could a kiwi with laser eyes be on this nation’s next flag?

Gizmodo: 9 Designs That Could Finally Replace New Zealand’s Controversial Flag

The Independant: We don’t think New Zealanders are taking redesigning their national flag entirely seriously

Community Resources

As the National Road Show continues to travel around New Zealand, the flag.govt.nz site has been updated with a community ‘resource kit’. Created to help encourage discussions with “whanau, workmates or members of a community”, you can read tips about having a respectful discussion, take a quiz, and then share what you ‘stand for’ as part of the process on the standfor.co.nz site.

Here’s the tips from the document about having a respectful discussion.

Tips for a respectful discussion:

• Encourage everyone to participate
• Focus on responding to the discussion questions
• All responses are valid – there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers
• Respect the views of others
• Provide each other with encouraging feedback
• Ask people to clarify what they are saying if you do not understand
• It is ok to disagree, feel challenged or uncomfortable

As well as that helpful advice many on Twitter discussing the flag could benefit from reading, there’s a quiz with some simple questions about the history of our current flag.

New Zealand Flag Quiz:

1. How many official national flags has New Zealand had?
2. How was New Zealand’s first official national flag chosen?
3. What flag did New Zealand use immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi?
4. When did the current design become our official national flag?
5. What is the Tino Rangatiratanga flag?
6. In what ways is the New Zealand flag different from the Australian flag?

You can find the answers to the quiz and other information about engaging with your community at the link below.

— https://www.govt.nz/assets/documents/flags/fcp-community-resource-kit.pdf

Design Guidelines & Submissions

Alongside the launch of standfor.co.nz, the flag.govt.nz site received an update with more information about the flag consideration project. As well as officially calling for entries, design guidelines covering a range of topics such as intellectual property, suggested flag ratios, common principles, and minimum submission standards were published.

Common Principles

In the guidelines document are 8 “common principles”. They’re a great starting point for the criteria in judging the success of a flag, of which I’ll write more about later. For now, here are the principles from the guidelines below:

1. The design should be simple, uncluttered and balanced.
2. It should be designed to be flown, and viewed from either side.
3. It should look as “timeless” as possible. Avoid using features in the design that will cause the flag to become dated or obsolete. Imagine the flag in a historic setting and in a very modern setting to check whether it would work in both.
4. In terms of colour, using fewer colours will keep the design simple and bold.
5. Contrast is important – use light colours on dark, and vice-versa. So a white cross on red is a good contrast, but a blue cross on red would be a poor contrast. This is a very useful guideline, especially for choosing the colour of any symbols and their background.
6. If the use of non-contrasting colours is unavoidable, make use of outline colours.
7. Any animals or birds would traditionally face the flagpole, so that the animal faces in the same direction as the flag bearer.
8. The top left hand corner of the flag is typically the place of honour in a flag. This reflects the fact that the opposite end of the flag wears out first, and is the section that is least visible when the flag is not fully unfurled.

Point number 7. is an interesting principle to include and a positive sign of the detail expected of the panel in judging a flags qualities. If for example a submission of a flag with a kiwi bird was submitted facing away from the flagpole, that would be one reason for it not to be considered.

A couple of other points in the guidelines document provide advice as to what won’t be considered:

• Offensive or divisive designs – Flags should be a symbol of pride and unify the community they represent. For this reason, flags that are offensive to an individual or community, or that are divisive, will not be considered.
• Flag designs that include words, photos or complex objects will not be considered.
• Flag designs that incorporate the image of a person will not be considered.

— https://www.govt.nz/assets/documents/flags/flag-design-guidelines.pdf

Submission Process

Submissions will be accepted from the 4th of May till the 16th of July 2015. Each submission requires your name (and the name of the designer if that is not you), your ethnicity, and citizenship status (all mandatory fields). Fortunately, you get a few extra characters than a tweet to describe your design. 200 words to be precise.

If you want to dive straight in and submit your design you can now do so, however before you get overly excited and press “submit” I would strongly encourage you to read the terms and conditions closely. Thankfully they’re not overwhelming long, but they’ll no doubt be controversial.

Public Engagement

The public engagement campaign for the flag consideration project officially kicked off with the launch of the standfor.co.nz site this week.

The site is primarily set up to collate answers from New Zealanders responding to the question “what do we stand for?” The purpose of which, it appears, will allow trends and common values to rise, reflecting the sentiment around the possible change in flag. The intention is then, that these insights could help guide designs for those considering submitting a concept.

By highlighting key values you can already search and discover popular terms such as; “equality”, “freedom” and “change”. There’s a diverse range of responses associated to each term ranging from the eloquent to the offensive, as well as some especially hilarious posts, as any public internet forum will attract. It is no doubt keeping the team behind the site busy, as one post mentions; “You’re gonna get awfully tired moderating an entire nation of trolls”.

Kris Sowersby also made this comment about the process thus far:

This is like those cop shows where they ask people to phone in with details about a crime for reward money, and spend weeks dealing with the crank callers and bullshit artists.

Despite the rush of posts surrounding the launch, one of the secondary goals of the site appears to be the sharing function of suggested flag designs. A section of standfor.co.nz allows a user to upload a design and see it on a flag pole.

The Flag Pole

Speaking of flag poles, you can also get your name engraved on one as part of the engagement process. If you submit a response to the question “what do we stand for?” you get an option to have your name engraved on Te Pou Herenga Tangata: Our nation’s flagpole.

UPDATE 1: Despite conflicting opinions on the typeface used in the mock-up, the Stand For NZ Twitter account confirmed it is using Guardian Egyptian Headline¹. Sadly, that was not the news I was hoping for. I’m also still not convinced. Either way, it’s a weird choice considering the origins of the font.

UPDATE 2: The Stand For NZ Twitter account responded again with a further update clarifying the mock-up had defaulted to another font. It appears the intention was to use Guardian Egyptian Headline, however another typeface was displayed instead by error.

At this point it is fortunately still an artists impression of what the sculpture might look like. Hopefully a more appropriate typeface that reflects New Zealanders can be used to etch what we stand for into history.

Roadshows & Resources

Alongside the launch of the standfor.co.nz site, other details have been provided about the flag consideration project on the flag.govt.nz site.

The Flag Consideration Panel (FCP) will be travelling the country in a Toyota Hiace “to encourage all New Zealanders to share what they stand for at the nationwide roadshow, public workshops and hui.” Nothing is more New Zealand than Toyota, right? Barry Crump would be proud.

Considering the $640 per day rate the panel will get, that’s an expensive tour. I’ll be going along to the Wellington sessions in June to see what happens.

Find out when the Toyota Hiace and FCP will be visiting your town.

On a more positive note, it was impressive to see the material provided for schools to use in classrooms to encourage conversations about national identity, symbolism and the use of flags in our society.

In the resource document there’s also a timeline suggesting schools recreate the process by establishing their own judging panel, designing concepts and voting in their own referendums. I think this a great way to encourage and involve the generation likely to be most affected by a potential change. Involving the youth of New Zealand is an important and critical part of this process. They’re also represented on the Flag Consideration Panel by Stephen Jones, an Invercargill Youth Councillor.

You can read the document on the Ministry of Education site.

Finally, if after all of that it’s not clear what the difference between the two sites is; standfor.co.nz is for public engagement and flag.govt.nz is for submissions / general information.