http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/garden/29FLAG.html
In Iraq, Flag Design, Too, Comes Under Fire By ERNEST BECK and JULIE LASKY Published: April 29, 2004 WHEN the government of Qatar, the tiny, oil-rich emirate, asked Tariq Atrissi last year to design a logo for it, the mandate was clear: to communicate to investors and tourists the country's ornate past and modern aspirations. "How much can you represent a country by a logo and some colors?" Mr. Atrissi, a graphic artist of Lebanese origin, recalled thinking. The symbol he designed combines blue for hospitality; gold for sand, sun and luxury; and burgundy, Qatar's national color. But creating a flag for a country at war is trickier. The flag unveiled this week by Iraq's United States-backed governing council was designed to reflect a forward-looking, inclusive Iraq free of Saddam Hussein. But many Iraqis have denounced the design, saying it lacks Islamic imagery and resembles the blue-and-white color scheme of Israel. In response, the governing council decided yesterday to darken the blue. Besides, the new flag is only temporary, Massoud Barzani, the head of the governing council this month, said yesterday at a press conference. "It will stand for a few months until we decide on a flag for Iraq," he said. Prof. Frederic Pearson, the director of the nonpartisan Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, said: "This flag will symbolize mostly the view that an illegitimate U.S. occupation has produced a flag." Responding to criticism yesterday, the flag's designer, Rifat Chaderchi, 77, a London-based architect and writer, said: "I didn't think about Israel. Political opinions don't concern me. I approached the design from a graphic point of view." There has also been confusion about the process that gave rise to the new design. A spokesman for the governing council, Hameed Kafaei, said the design was the result of a competition in which 30 proposals had been submitted. The Independent, a London newspaper, however, reported yesterday that the designer had been given the assignment over the phone by his brother, Nasir Chaderchi, who is a prominent Sunni member of the council. The flag's designer said that he received a call a few months ago from his brother, asking him to submit a proposal. The only guidelines, he said, were to present Iraq as a Western country and to include references to the past. He said his inspiration was simple flags like those of Canada and Switzerland. Michael Bierut, a partner in the design firm Pentagram, who worked on the graphics of United's new budget airline, Ted, also believes the council might have jumped the gun by unfurling a flag before the Iraqi people had elected a government. "They apparently wanted to create a symbol first and then build a consensus and a democratic society around it," Mr. Bierut said. "But it's a symbol for something that doesn't exist yet." The new flag has a blue Islamic crescent on a white field and three stripes. Two stripes are blue, symbolizing the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam, and the third is yellow, representing the Kurdish minority. The words "Allahu akbar" (God is great), added to the flag by Saddam Hussein, have been removed, along with three stars. While Iraqi officials said that the blue crescent might be replaced with red or gold, the new color scheme is still a radical departure from flag designs in most other Islamic countries. These traditionally contain the colors green (the prophet Muhammad's favorite), red as a symbol of Arab nationalism and white and black, referring to the battle standards of medieval Islamic dynasties. For Hayes Roth, the vice president for worldwide marketing at Landor Associates, tweaking a country's image is an exercise similar to creating a consumer product like toothpaste. "You have to understand the target audience, the core message and brand promise," said Mr. Roth, whose company repackaged the images of Pittsburgh, Jordan and Hong Kong, when that former British colony reverted to Chinese rule. Many countries have successfully retooled an image with a flag makeover. When South Africa emerged from the apartheid era, the government considered roughly 7,000 proposals for a new flag to reflect for the first time the country's multiethnic population. Rwanda removed red and black, reminders of blood and mourning, from its post-genocide flag and instead used vibrant sky blue, yellow and green. Flags are often hoisted or swept away in defiant gestures as regimes change, but they can fuel passions during peacetime, too. "Flags are Rorshach blots on which people project their hopes and fears, loyalties and hatreds," Mr. Bierut said. The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas proposed replacing the European Union's austere flag — a blue field with yellow stars — with a multicolor bar code, a suggestion that was met with disdain and discarded. A British group that recommended adding black trim to the Union Jack for the commonwealth's nonwhite population drew fire.
