OUGD601 - Practical / Flag - Research

Due to the nature of the concept revolving around travel, it was suggested I look at this sense of identity related to culture. The most obvious depiction of this was through different Flags that instantly represent the national identity of each individual country and I found this form of visual communication really interesting. This can be a strong sense of inspiration for the design process exploring this relationship between colour and shape to identify a strong identity for the brand and its design direction. 

My first initial area of research was through on online TED article that discussed the conventions of flag design and interestingly flags that succeeded in breaking these rules however remained successful pieces of design. This article informs initial research and inspires initial design directions allowing a more informed design process.  Ted Talk - Rule Breaking Flags

Refugee Flag: 

The Rio 2016 Olympics held first group of Olympic competitors to be entirely made up of refugees, distinctively seeking asylum all over the world there is no flag to represent these athletes within the games. A non-profit called The Refugee Nation commissioned artists to develop a flag and national anthem for the Olympic team that would represent the athletes and the growing number of refugees around the world. “We felt we could do more,” say Artur Lipori and Caro Rebello, the co-founders of The Refugee Nation. The flag of the Refugee Nation was designed by the artist Yara Said, a Syrian refugee who found asylum in Amsterdam. She states "Black and orange is a symbol of solidarity with all these brave souls that had to wear life- vests to cross the sea to look for safety in a new country. Since I had wear one, I have a personal engagement with these life-vests, and these two colors". This flag is utilises the ideology of flags to create an extremely powerful message that is symbolic and conceptually designed. 

Protest Flags: 

Another use of flags is within protest marches often used to articulate the messages and ideologies of a particular group/movement. This creates a strong contextual link to the millennial target demographics liberal attitudes as 75% of voters aged between 18 and 24 voted to remain part of the EU. This reinforces the brand personality of freedom, generating a stronger consumer brand relationship by association of interests and will improve the brand equity with this consumer through this liberal brand personality. 

Sarah Boris Flag: 

An example of how flags can be utilised to convey political uprising is through the work of Sarah Boris whose portfolio manages to create work with a highly conceptual bias that’s always appropriate to her audiences attitudes. Sarah’s work found itself all over the internet thanks to her contemporary personal project satirically depicting the state of the EU Brexit crisis sharing a flag designed for  post-Brexit Britain . The piece was initially created last year in response to the crisis talks around the NHS. It’s a simple but powerful piece that uses “fragile” tape to form a Union Jack flag. She says: “That piece reminded me that it’s important to keep on doing these things that aren’t commissioned—it sounds obvious, but as designers we often don’t make the space for that.” Using this medium of flags for political protest lead me to question how else this medium of communication can be utilised. 

This research leads to to question how this medium of flags which creates a strong iconography of travel and identity can be utilised to spread a message. Linking to the brief which requires a tangible symbol of the movement in order to create a more physical dynamic to the project, I feel a flag could be an appropriate response to this element of the brief as it strongly connotes the iconography of the concepts subject of travel. This will work particularly well linking with a social media campaign as this can create a strong tangible link to the service that can utilised to develop a stronger brand image and using the shared beliefs to generate a more engaging brand personality, thus  develop a positive consumer-brand relationship by interest of association