New EU Flag...Hot or Not !?

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Because this is the former Euro board, I suppose we should discuss EU isssues namely the New Flag...


Do you like it or not!?
Here's a bit from ananova about it:

EU may get new 'bar-code' logo

The European Union may be set to get a new bar-code-style logo as part of an image overhaul.

It would replace the current blue EU flag which has 12 gold stars representing member states.

European Commission president Romano Prodi commissioned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to create the new design.

It places all the colours of the national flags of EU nations in strips alongside each other.

Mr Koolhaas says he wants to show the unique diversity and unity of Europe in one image.

The Independent reports Mr Prodi wants departments across the EU to look at altering Brussels' visual communication in the light of Mr Koolhaas' work.

Once member states agreed to the change, flags and letterheads would be changed.

Some designers don't like the new logo.

Bruce Dunlop, of Bruce Dunlop and Associates, said: "This is one of those ideas that would seem great around a boardroom table after a couple of Aussie chardonnays, but in practice it doesn't work."

The current EU flag was officially adopted by the European Commission in 1986.

Slimjim

Reminds me of a Commodore 64 load screen.


I HATE IT!

Lenny

Is this serious?

Saruman

OK who voted YES??????????????

colinsky

I think it does look rather neat in fact, but I feel for all the poor school-children trying to draw the flag from memory with their crayons.

...And just wait until the next set of countries join!

alb

is it april 1st again already?!?........ my god it's hideous and it hurts my retinas. I thought the old blue one with the 12 stars was fine, and even then they could have coloured each star in each countries colours if they wanted to, it would be better then this barcode on acid type thing anyway.

Bard

surely this must be a joke... (???)

alb

yes has anyone a link to any offical place where there are details of this? although i did hear them discussing it on the pat kenny show this morning on the radio... so if its a hoax they're in on it or have been fooled too

Guy Incognito

I think it's all a ploy to get us to look at the site in his sig.:D

An, er, I don't like the flag.

colinsky

Here's where I first saw it:

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=292939
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=292938

Coyote

pat kenny fooled well i never

EU rejects call to change flag

There are no plans to change the European Union flag, Commission officials in Brussels have insisted, despite a new design proffered by a Dutch architect.

The traditional EU flag, with 12 stars on a blue background has been unchanged since it was adopted in 1986.

The suggestion for replacing it came during a Commission-sponsored brain-storming meeting last year to discuss the future role of Brussels as the "capital of Europe".

Rem Koolhaas, invited to take part as a noted architectural innovator, suggested that the "diversity and unity" of Europe could better be reflected by a "flag barcode" - a flag with a series of vertical stripes including all the colours in the national flags of the member states.

His idea appeared in a summary of the meeting published earlier this year - along with his suggestion that all EU buildings in Brussels should be replaced by one big "idyllic" campus on the site of an old customs warehouse beside a canal.

Other suggestions for developing the future functions of Brussels in its increasing role as the EU capital included setting up an "Institute for Multi-lingualism", a "Centre for Advanced Studies" and introducing international architectural competitions for designs for a future "European Quarter" in Brussels.

"All the ideas put forward at our meeting have been welcomed with interest, but we did not commission a design for a new flag and there is no intention of replacing the current one" said a Commission spokesman.

The gold stars on the present blue flag were never intended to depict the number of member states - otherwise the flag would have been rendered obsolete in 1995 when three new countries joined to make the current 15-nation EU.

Instead the stars, forming an exact circle, are placed in the positions of the hours on the face of a clock. They "represent the union of the peoples of Europe", according to the Commission.

The flag was originally the emblem of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which pre-dates the European Union, has 42 members, and upholds the European Convention of Human Rights.

Story filed: 12:11 Wednesday 8th May 2002

linked from

Coyote

Saruman

gives me a headache looking at it!

sceptre

Aaaaagh, scary.

(Lisa Burke is nice tho')

b20uvkft6m5xwg

OI !! Guy Incognito
Leave Lisa out of this

Its all above board-
The EU site is pretty scant on updated news items so I couldn't find a link there, but there was about an hour devoted to it on the Pat Kenny show this morning.

I like the idea of it but I'd be weary of its proximity to supermarket checkout scanners

BuffyBot

OMG - that is very hard on the eyes.


Prolly designed by the same person that thought of the name "Consignia" for the UK Post Office


Thank god they've rejected it

EvilGeorge

That thing is hard on the eyes.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Yep it looks like its dead in the water...
http://breaking.tcm.ie/story.asp?j=46871100&p=4687zx5x&n=46872087&x=

EU rejects call to change flag
08/05/2002

There are no plans to change the European Union flag, Commission officials in Brussels insisted today, despite a bold new design proffered by a Dutch architect.

The traditional EU flag, with 12 stars on a blue background has been unchanged since it was adopted in 1986.

The suggestion for replacing it came during a Commission-sponsored brain-storming meeting last year to discuss the future role of Brussels as the ‘‘capital of Europe’’.

Rem Koolhaas, invited to take part as a noted architectural innovator, suggested that the ‘‘diversity and unity’’ of Europe could better be reflected by a ‘‘flag barcode’’ - a flag with a series of vertical stripes including all the colours in the national flags of the member states.

His idea appeared in a summary of the meeting published earlier this year - along with his suggestion that all EU buildings in Brussels should be replaced by one big ‘‘idyllic’’ campus on the site of an old customs warehouse beside a canal.

Other suggestions for developing the future functions of Brussels in its increasing role as the EU capital included setting up an ‘‘Institute for Multi-lingualism’’, a ‘‘Centre for Advanced Studies’’ and introducing international architectural competitions for designs for a future ‘‘European Quarter’’ in Brussels.

‘‘All the ideas put forward at our meeting have been welcomed with interest, but we did not commission a design for a new flag and there is no intention of replacing the current one,’’ said a Commission spokesman.

The gold stars on the present blue flag were never intended to depict the number of member states - otherwise the flag would have been rendered obsolete in 1995 when three new countries joined to make the current 15-nation EU.

Instead the stars, forming an exact circle, are placed in the positions of the hours on the face of a clock. They ‘‘represent the union of the peoples of Europe’’, according to the Commission.

‘‘The number of stars is fixed, 12 being the symbol of perfection and unity’’ says the Commission’s website.

The flag was originally the emblem of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which pre-dates the European Union, has 42 members, and upholds the European Convention of Human Rights.

Scruff

Originally posted by Slimjim
Reminds me of a Commodore 64 load screen.


I HATE IT!

beats a spectrum one though

would be easier if they just got all the colours and mixed em all together and used the one colour that came out with a big E.U. stamped in the middle. and as countries were added it wouldn't make too much of a difference to the coulur thats there for the lot already.

Hell of a lot easier on the poor school kids.

Gaz

That cant be real , the colour bars are different sizes , surly that would cause probs ..you know " mine is bigger than yours !" , "my da could kill your da" type stuff !

Ruaidhri

well at least the irish flag is first
god it's hideous. someone KILL IT SHOOT IT IN THE HEAD

mike65

Lisa's a babe int she?...er back on topic, thats the kind of flag that can win wars. I mean just paint the Eurocorps tanks with it and the other side can't miss!

Mike.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

It actually reminds me of one of those posters you see at College Green sometimes- The ones where you are suppossed to stare at it for a few minutes and then you start to see a yacht on the open sea's or some lark:rolleyes:

Maybe the EU are trying to pull a cruel trick like in Kevin Smith's "mallrats"

alb

Originally posted by Darth Homer
That cant be real , the colour bars are different sizes , surly that would cause probs ..you know " mine is bigger than yours !" , "my da could kill your da" type stuff !

I think u'll find that each country has an equal width on the flag, the reason the colour bars vary is because some countries have more of a particular colour on their flag than others alsofor example the red of both spain and portugal are side by side making a thick red stripe. It still sucks though.

BattlingCheese

Yeah, it's horrible allright. Looks like a deck chair pattern.

koneko

Ugh. Hate it. What is it meant to be? One of those dodgy 3d pictures I can't see anything in?

My god.

Remember in school when you had to draw pictures of flags for different countries, and colour them in. Or if you make a little flag for the football. Imagine it. Yay Europe. I'll just draw a whole bunch of random coloured lines now. It's so tacky. So 70s.

My eyes are bleeding.

Saruman

agh i made the mistake of looking at it again and now its burned into my retina! eeek the pain!

Nietzschean

UGGGLLLYYY

Chaos-Engine

Alittle too like a bar code for me...
Besides its far too Nationalistic. As mentioned above "How thin will those lines be with enlargement and new lines added??"

How about a more Supra-national flag based around the ppl of europe not its nations...

Further European Intergration isn't possible unless we move away from an inter-governmental form toward a supra-governmental EU....

I agree that the Blue flag with the stars wasn't great. You couldn't even see the stars from a far.

Maybe just add the stars to the current (12 star) flag and make them larger.... Its only a flag and I don't look up the the Irish flag and feel irish.
European identity can only be created through involvment not a bloody flag...

deco

b20uvkft6m5xwg

FYI,
The 12 stars stand for the divinity of the Virgin Mary (seen on most iconic statues as a halo).

NOT, contrary to popular belief as the indicating the number of member states.

potlatch

I voted yes. I've liked the idea of this flag/logo from the second I saw it. While I'm skeptical about the 'bar code' idea because it suggests even more strongly that the EU is an economic union (which is its only success), I think it's better than the stars because it really does reflect the diversity of the union, unity in diversity. However, I'd like to see them try and represent it on Euro coins and notes!

I think it should be applied to official letterheads and used in public campaigns, on billboards etc. but the use of the stars has almost become traditional these days, which can't be overlooked. In the end of the day, it was an attempt at re-branding the EU.

I think, as a flag, it would prove a lot more successful than the blue flag; yes, it does appear nationalistic so long as you associate colours with nationalism. What I see it suggesting is the existence of nations among nations, presided over by a huge, cavernous bureaucracy. Beyond economics, the EU is experimenting with nationalism as a tool of legitimation.

Chaos-Engine: instead of it becoming a supra-national bureaucracy, how about it becoming a network of localised government, with a centralised agency seeing to community-level decisionmaking? Not likely yet, but possible and definitely desirable.

Anyway, I think the flag just looks really cool - I just like all that stuff.

sceptre

Originally posted by 80project
FYI,
The 12 stars stand for the divinity of the Virgin Mary (seen on most iconic statues as a halo).

NOT, contrary to popular belief as the indicating the number of member states.

I've heard that. People call it the "Marian Seal" hypothesis. What adds to the theory is that the Council of Europe adopted the flag on December 8, 1955 - feast of the Immaculate Conception and all that.

The official explanation behind the number of stars is that in the 1950s the Council of Europe had 15 members. One of these members was Saarland, before it reunited with West Germany. Because of this the Germans wouldn't agree to 15 stars. France wouldn't agree to 14 as it excluded Saarland. No-one would agree on 13 for superstitious reasons. Twelve was agreed upon because it was a "good" number and because of the historical importance of the number 12 (signs of the zodiac, spots on a clock, months in a year, apostles, tables of Roman law and starry crowns of the horsemen of the apocalypse)

The official reasoning, if you probe a Eurocrat, is the 12 spots on a clock.

Believe whichever appeals. I'm a fan of conspiracy theories so the December 8 adoption might just swing it for me.

The reason behind the colours is at least undisputed: blue and gold were the original colours of Count Richard Coudenhove Kalergi who first proposed a Pan European Union in 1923.

Alternative designs (while we're laughing at one, we may as well laugh at a few more):

Kappar

I think it is Great. Very modern and trendy.
Oh and i have a Peter Werth shirt that looks something like that except it has brown and orange stripes! LOVELY

Thanx 4 The Fish

\why don't we just make it the same as the American flag with different colours and get it over with...

netwhizkid

Hi,
I think that the E.U flag is just fine, it represents all countrys involved, It should not get anymore stars even if enlargemant does occur, i myself are against enlargement, but i'll save it for the "Jobs to go with No to Nice Vote" Thread,

Regards netwhizkid

fisty

Gah!
I never wanted to look at that flag again!!!!
look what you did!
look at WHAT YOU DID!
LOCK THIS!

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Originally posted by netwhizkid
Hi,
I think that the E.U flag is just fine, it represents all countrys involved, It should not get anymore stars even if enlargemant does occur, i myself are against enlargement, but i'll save it for the "Jobs to go with No to Nice Vote" Thread,

Regards netwhizkid

Please read this post mentioned above...
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=469745#post469745

It clarifys your post regarding stars/member states

PH01

Souldn't this thread be in 'Politics' and not 'Business & Economy'?

irishguy

its a good idea but the flag sucks,mabey they could implement something from each countrey but not as complicated

aine

most definately NOT!!

while the reasoning behind the proposed new EU flag may be well intentioned i.e. to show the multicultural identity of the union, it is never the less and eye sore!! and quite frankly it kinda makes me dizzy!

plus should we not be emphasing what is common to the member states not the differences??!!

I say lets keep our well balanced 12 star flag......anywho doesn't Romano Prodi have anything better do be doing with his time?

Panda

i voted no because its ugly as hell and think of the poor kids in national school trying to paint that, the horror! :eek:

but we are the first flag on it so YAY!

tribble

i kinda like it, it grows on you...

b

Makaveli

Originally posted by PH01
Souldn't this thread be in 'Politics' and not 'Business & Economy'?

Only took 5 months for you to think of this?
That flag sucks.

magick

I think we should stick with the current flag. I quiet like it .

MAC_E

I hope our friends in brussels didnt spent too much money researching this little project for a new flag.