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Friday, February 28, 2025

Controversy over new Coat of Arms design

Graphic designers say go back to drawing board

by

KEVON FELMINE
38 days ago
20250121
The updated Coat of Arms of Trinidad and Tobago

The updated Coat of Arms of Trinidad and Tobago

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic de­bate con­tin­ues over the re­design of the Coat of Arms (CoA), with graph­ic de­sign­ers urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to de­lay its roll­out on na­tion­al brands, cur­ren­cy and doc­u­ments so a pro­fes­sion­al re­view can be done, af­ter im­ages of the new de­sign were re­vealed over the week­end.

While not want­i­ng to of­fend jew­eller Gillian Bish­op, who was charged with the re­design, the de­sign­ers yes­ter­day point­ed out artis­tic flaws that may cre­ate chal­lenges in print­ing or adapt­ing it to var­i­ous sur­faces.

Award-win­ning graph­ic de­sign­er Mar­lon Dar­beau be­lieves T&T could have achieved a bet­ter re­sult with a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to re­plac­ing Christo­pher Colum­bus’ ships with the steel­pan.

He said find­ing one per­son to sin­gle-hand­ed­ly com­plete the project was chal­leng­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween a strong graph­ic de­sign­er and il­lus­tra­tor would have been ben­e­fi­cial. With the cho­sen de­sign, Dar­beau fore­sees chal­lenges in repli­cat­ing it across sur­faces.

He de­scribed the re­design as a sig­nif­i­cant un­der­tak­ing that should not be tak­en light­ly, adding, “I am sort of dis­ap­point­ed that af­ter three months of this con­ver­sa­tion, this is what we have in front of us.”

Dar­beau con­tend­ed that the CoA was not tru­ly re­designed but sim­ply mod­i­fied by re­plac­ing the ships with a steel­pan, liken­ing it to plac­ing a plas­ter over an is­sue. He em­pha­sised that the new el­e­ment does not align with the first il­lus­tra­tion style by the orig­i­nal cre­ator Car­lyle Chang.

“Are you ren­der­ing the cur­rent pan sym­bol in a style used on the cur­rent Coat of Arms, or are you go­ing to re-ren­der the en­tire Coat of Arms to be in har­mo­ny with the cho­sen ap­proach to­day?”

He ar­gued that the is­sue stemmed from the process, say­ing while a sole de­sign­er was an op­tion, some­thing of this mag­ni­tude re­quired top pro­fes­sion­als work­ing to­geth­er. The team, he said, should have in­clud­ed cre­ative di­rec­tors, graph­ic de­sign­ers ex­pe­ri­enced in cor­po­rate and re­tail iden­ti­ties, il­lus­tra­tors, and tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sors.

“I think this re­quired deep re­flec­tion and con­sul­ta­tion from pro­fes­sion­als who could it­er­ate col­lec­tive­ly un­til a so­lu­tion meet­ing the project’s goals and ob­jec­tives was found,” he said.

He added: “It would have al­so cre­at­ed a feed­back loop where pro­fes­sion­als could de­bate el­e­ments from dif­fer­ent van­tage points. You can see is­sues with the one-colour ap­pli­ca­tion and the var­i­ous us­age ap­pli­ca­tions.”

Dar­beau stressed his cri­tique was not meant to of­fend the de­sign­er but point­ed out that if the aim was to re­move colo­nial ves­tiges, the de­sign has failed, as el­e­ments like the helm and man­tle re­main.

Se­nior graph­ic de­sign­er Kam­ron Julien mean­while crit­i­cised the steel­pan’s place­ment, say­ing it looked lazi­ly copied and past­ed on­to the CoA with­out a pro­fes­sion­al touch.

“It does not seem like there was any pro­fes­sion­al touch of any sort. The colours are off. The art style is off. Even the way the steel­pan is paint­ed does not re­flect the style of the rest of the Coat of Arms, which has a more tra­di­tion­al paint­ed look and feel. Just all across the board, it could have been a lot bet­ter,” Julien said.

He fur­ther point­ed out that the steel­pan’s colour—a gold/or­ange shade with dark­er shad­ows—con­trasts with the yel­low hues of the hum­ming­bird and helm, mak­ing it ap­pear out of place. The pan’s struc­ture and the pres­ence of the pan sticks al­so seemed mis­aligned, he said.

“I feel like we could have done bet­ter. We have a coun­try full of as­pir­ing artists, sea­soned artists, vet­er­ans, de­sign­ers, and I do not know what hap­pened there, but it is dis­ap­point­ing.”

He urged the de­ci­sion-mak­ers to lis­ten to pub­lic feed­back and re­vis­it the de­sign process, as the CoA rep­re­sents the peo­ple.

Award-win­ning graph­ic de­sign­er Kevin Solomon likened the de­sign to a poor­ly ex­e­cut­ed film with bad CGI, mak­ing it look low-bud­get.

“The steel­pan is a dif­fer­ent de­sign from the rest of the Coat of Arms,” Solomon said.

“When that Coat of Arms was de­signed way back then, the process was dif­fer­ent. If you look at the birds, you can see brush or pen­cil strokes, but now, it looks like the de­sign­er used dig­i­tal tools for a clean­er look.”

He ar­gued that the smooth steel­pan con­trasts sharply with the rougher tex­tures of the oth­er el­e­ments, mak­ing it stand out in a way that dis­rupts vi­su­al har­mo­ny. The im­bal­ance in size and the lack of promi­nence of the pan sticks fur­ther de­tract from the com­po­si­tion, he added.

Solomon al­so warned that the State could face dif­fi­cul­ties print­ing the new CoA and achiev­ing the in­tend­ed de­sign con­sis­ten­cy. He sug­gest­ed that an ab­stract rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the steel­pan, dig­i­tal­ly craft­ed to blend seam­less­ly with the rest of the CoA, might have been a bet­ter ap­proach.

“The idea was great, but they did not ex­e­cute it prop­er­ly,” he said, urg­ing the State to re­turn to the draw­ing board be­fore un­veil­ing the re­design na­tion­al­ly.

Mean­while, sev­er­al cit­i­zens and en­ti­ties took to so­cial me­dia to com­ment on the new CoA.

Pan Trin­ba­go ex­pressed ex­cite­ment on Face­book, stat­ing: “For the first time in his­to­ry, the steel­pan takes its place on this na­tion­al sym­bol, rep­re­sent­ing our cul­ture, cre­ativ­i­ty, and re­silience.”

The or­gan­i­sa­tion de­scribed the mo­men­tous in­clu­sion as an ho­n­our to the steel­pan’s glob­al sig­nif­i­cance, call­ing it the heart­beat of the na­tion.

Many com­menters un­der the Pan Trin­ba­go post ex­pressed their de­light at the de­sign, de­scrib­ing it as “beau­ti­ful,” “awe­some,” and “a long time com­ing.” How­ev­er, opin­ions else­where were more crit­i­cal.

But one user sug­gest­ed mod­i­fi­ca­tions, say­ing: “Fun­ni­ly enough, I would al­so have re­moved the hel­met and ship’s wheel, re­plac­ing them with the Twin Tow­ers, and the plumes with the Cha­co­nia (flower).”

Oth­ers raised con­cerns about the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions, ques­tion­ing the cost of re­design­ing state doc­u­ments, cur­ren­cy, build­ings, and ve­hi­cles at this time.

A com­menter on the T&T Guardian post re­marked: “They could have at least stayed con­sis­tent with the orig­i­nal art style. If you’re go­ing to cre­ate some­thing that rep­re­sents the coun­try, please take the time to do it prop­er­ly.”

An­oth­er crit­ic ar­gued that the steel­pan was not sym­met­ri­cal­ly aligned with the rest of the CoA, while yet an­oth­er in­sist­ed that T&T’s his­to­ry could not be changed.


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