The people of New Zealand have been tasked with designing a new flag for their nation – with the best efforts to go before the electorate in a referendum next year.
While there’s no guarantee the flag will change – keeping the existing one remains an option – but there’s been plenty of interest from would be flag designers. And some of the entries thus far have been, interesting, to say the least.
The drive to bring about such significant change came from the similarity between the flag of New Zealand and its bigger next door neighbour, Australia. The flags are close to identical, with both including the union jack and a number of stars on a blue background.
The vote will be a two-part process. Stage one is a postal vote, in which the people will be asked to rank their favourites from a large selection. Then in stage two, in March 2016, the nation’s favourite new design will go up against the current design to see which flag New Zealand will sport from that day on.
Ahead of the vote the public have been invited to upload their designs to a gallery, and you can view all entries here. But for now, here are some of our favourites. The first couple appear to be slightly more sober attempts, a sentiment which pretty quickly falls off a cliff.
All images: www.govt.nz
Rangiroria
Designed by: Stu Donald from Bay of Plenty
Sticks with sold old reference (union jack inside the stars), keeps the southern cross, but adds our 2 most unique features - black and fern. As a Kiwi selling NZ products overseas, our identity MUST have this change to elevate us to the status we deserve.
A modification of MANAWA the peoples choice
Designed by: A variation of Otis Frizzell's flag design from Auckland
The original Otis Frizzell design had green representing both the land and the sea. In this modification the "sea" is rendered in blue. I love the strong symbols of identity in the original design - our connection to land and sea, the Southern Cross in the night sky, the long white cloud (with its allusion to the Maori name for our country), the koru and the colour black so beloved of our sports teams. I believe the blue sea in this modification provides both an interesting visual contrast to the land and another link (along with the Southern Cross) to our current flag.
Blue Sky, Blue Sea
Designed by: Phil Plunkett
"Keep it simple Bro! Everyone has a blue sheet at home they can cut up, Bam! 12 flags from one sheet."
Fire the Lazar!
Designed by: James Gray
"The laser beam projects a powerful image of New Zealand. I believe my design is so powerful it does not need to be discussed."
Blu Green Blue
Phil Plunkett
"Keep it simple Bro! Simple crisp design, can be flown upside down, inside out, back to front."
Sheep and Hokey Pokey
Designed by: Jesse Gibbs from Canterbury
‘This design represents all of NZ because we have lots of sheep and love hokey pokey ice cream. I even included the blue and red to keep all of you naysayers happy. Kiwi as bro.’
