Fly the Flag
- A Mutant Orchid
It's an odd thing to have an emotional response to the flag of another country. I mean, your own country is fine; you were brought up there, and the flag represents more to you than just a piece of design; it's part of your cultural thingie. But I have an emotional reaction to the flag of Hong Kong. I like it a lot.
It's simple, for a kick off. A single white image on a red background. The image itself isn't that simple, incorporating five stars against a backgroupd of a stylised bauhinia flower (Hong Kong's national flower, a mutant orchid), but the design contains a pleasing rotational symmetry that works against the simple rectangularity of the flag. It's a design that can be carried forward effectively into notepaper, rubber stamps, and multimedia presentations (and all without people decrying it as treason). It's sufficiently similar to the Chinese flag to give some sort of continuity of feel, without slavishly reproducing the Chinese brand trademark in the top-left quadrant (a particular pet hate of mine).
The flags of the world graded for design probably wouldn't like it, but they don't even mention it. Probably because of its relative newness.
19 March, 2002
