Analyze This - Vinod Chikkareddy - Flags and Other Stories

As kids, I guess there were some fairly common drawing assignments one got in school - nature scenes, parks, national flag ..

So drawing the Indian flag was kind of an interesting job for me.



You had to get the heights of the 3 horizontal color bars proportional (it was tough back then). You had to get a nice-looking blue circle in the middle (without using a compass, or even a rupee coin). And then the toughest part - the 24 radiating spokes with a common center. I remember sweating a lot on this, till I happened to see the Sri Lankan flag.



And then, life was beautiful again. My sympathies went out to the Lankan kids.

_____

My 'flag'ging memories were revived recently when I saw this. The Epica awards are very prestigious in the advertising world, and the print awards for 2005 were won by Grande Reportagem, a Portuguese news magazine that is recognised for its investigative reports and excellent photo-journalism. Their "Meet the World" campaign used flags of several nations very creatively, to bring up issues relating to that country.

From the above link -

China – the dominant red background of the Chinese flag is used to symbolise the proportion of 14 year-old child workers in China, while the smaller yellow stars represent 14 year-old children in school.

USA – the red stripes represent those in favour of the war in Iraq, the white stripes represent those who are against it and the blue area of the flag are those who don’t know where Iraq is.

The campaign encompasses eight fundamental themes. In addition to child labour and the war in Iraq, other subjects addressed the distribution of wealth in Brazil, child mortality in Burkina Faso, drug trafficing in Columbia, the abuse of woman in Somalia, the spread of infectious diseases in Angola and energy wastage in the European Union.

Do check out the flags at the link new link. Very instructive.