Hello gorgeous friends, hope all’s alright. My British passport expired this month so, after a long pandemic-related delay, I received a renewed one. Disappointingly it’s in the new Isolationist Blue, which is actually black. The people that care about what colour it is will be furious.
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Passport to success
The colour isn’t all that’s changed, though: the new British passport is a dour, limp-looking thing; particularly placed up against, say, a European one. I’m extremely fortunate to be eligible for both; a luxury afforded to me, ironically, by immigration. But it did set me wondering what design constraints apply to passports: are they all this awful now? Is nobody embracing the passport as a design opportunity?
Objectively, the best passport isn’t the best looking, but rather the one that grants its bearer the greatest mobility. For that, the Henley Passport Index ranks all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a visa. Japan comes top and is, coincidentally, a lovely-looking thing, featuring the works of Katsushika Hokusai including The Great Wave.
It’s seems the new British passport was designed down to a cost rather than up to a standard. I’m sure it does clever security things but, whereas former designs featured noteworthy landmarks, inventions or artworks, the new one features nearly nothing of the country from which it was issued. The recently-popular Irish passport features a lot of what my grandma would’ve called diddly-aye, but at least the design is rooted in Ireland. Or possibly Middle Earth.
The Swiss passport has a history of elegant design, so it didn’t come as a surprise that it gets more fabulous under ultraviolet light. But in this respect the Swiss are not alone. The minimalistic Norwegian passport is a masterpiece by design studio Neue, even more so under UV, under which the aurora borealis appears. It’s a strong statement of national identity and a design classic. At a time when Britain is trying to reassert its place in the world, why did they let slip the opportunity to do the same?