schneiderism

Flags are important visual symbols of nation, culture, history, and identity. And yet, flag design does not seem to evolve much outside of the odd revolution, break up, or nation building exercise, and even those results tend to be somewhat derivative. Apparently, I missed this story of innovation in flag design the first time around and having just come across it thought it worth capturing here. Above is the design for a new flag for the European Union created by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhas and his design firm OMA. This design was a response to a commission by the European Union in 2002 to design a new flag for the EU to rebrand the Union representing Europe’s “diversity and unity”. The design from OMA came to be known as the “barcode” for incredibly obvious reasons, but was especially unique in how it represents the colors of each member nation. An interesting feature of this design is that it would change to incorporate the addition of future nations to the EU, thus being a visual representation of how the EU would change and grow, in that way perhaps not so unlike the flag of the United States and how it evolved by adding a star to represent the incorporation of new states into the union. Supporters of this design felt it strongly and appropriately reflected both the individuality and collectiveness of the nations comprising the European Union.

Despite being a beautiful, meaningfull and dynamic design, decidely more so than the as yet unchanged EU flag with the twelve stars of the original founding nations over a blue field, the design from OMA provoked an outcry of critisism. Sadly, it was never adopted beyond being used by the Austrian presidency of the EU in 2006.