One of the strongest criticism of the use of the silver fern on a New Zealand Flag is that it looks like a company logo.
(That’s probably because it is so widely used as a symbol of New Zealand it is incorporated in many company logos.)
In the opinion posted by Toby Manhire at NZ Herald that gave the ‘Read Peak’ campaign a big boost – – he wrote:
In a heartfelt and constructive blog post, Wellington startup guy Rowan Simpson makes a cogent argument for the missing Red Peak (bit.ly/redpeak). He notes that it looks like a flag, not a logo.
Simpson’s argument corporatised the four chosen flags:
At the moment it’s like being asked to choose between a Carl Jr, a Big Mac, a Whopper and … actually I don’t know the burger equivalent of the hypnoflag, so I’ll leave that to your imagination.
And he said the ‘Red Peak’ was “designed to be a flag”.
It may well have been designed to be a flag. As were ten thousand other designs submitted, many of them featuring silver ferns. Different people have different ideas of what they think a flag could look like.
But ‘Red Peak’ could just as easily be used as a company logo. In fact Stuff reports that Red Peak flag design strikingly similar to North Carolina engineering firm logo.
A US engineering firm whose logo has graced wine bottles and notepaper cubes is stunned to discover its newest potential incarnation – as the national flag of New Zealand.
Images of the logo, used by North Carolina’s Peak Engineering since 2008, started circulating on social media last week.
On Saturday, company owners Beth and Jeff Roach said they thought its similarity to “Red Peak”, the design that 35,000 people have petitioned to add to the flag referendum, was “curious”.
This logo is very similar to the flag. And it even incorporates the word ‘Peak’.
Website: Peak Engineering & Design
Now this doesn’t mean that the ‘Red Peak’ design wouldn’t make a good flag. It would look fine as a flag.
But it does show that criticism of the silver fern as a company logo is silly. Any flag could be a logo and many logos could be a flag.
Hollyfield
/ 13th September 2015I don’t understand why people say that a flag design looks like a logo, as if that’s a bad thing. To me, a flag is a country’s “logo”.
From the Oxford English Dictionary (online edition)
Logo: a graphic representation or symbol of a company name, trademark, abbreviation, etc
Flag: a piece of cloth, esp bunting, often attached to a pole or staff, decorated with a design and used as an emblem, symbol, or standard
They’re both symbols – one to represent a company, the other a country.
Pete George
/ 13th September 2015It’s just one of may irrelevant disses used when people don’t like a design.
Mike C
/ 13th September 2015The PEAK Engineering and Design Company should sue the Red Peak Flag “Designer” for plagiarism. LOL.
kittycatkin
/ 13th September 2015Well, now that we have all seen that logo, it should eliminate the Red Peak-although it’s been eliminated anyway, de facto, as I have heard that it’s too late and the referendum material is not going to be redone. It would make us ridiculous, anyway.
col
/ 13th September 2015Toby knew all about the Peak Engineering logo before he wrote that article. He was engaged in a conversation on twitter about it the day before he wrote the article. He choose to ignore it hoping it would go away
eszett
/ 13th September 2015I agree and in general the criticism of the silver fern in that regard is rather unjustified. Taking the Canadian example, the maple leaf, as it stands in the flag, is ubiquitous in company logos. Air Canada being the prime example.
No one is bothered by that.
kittycatkin
/ 13th September 2015I do take the flag/logo point, though. To me, a logo is a company sign or symbol like the ones that cars have, The word flag-unqualified-would make me think of a country’s flag.But log, unqualified, would make me think of a sign or symbol like the MacDonalds’ arches.