Kevon Felmine

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.