Tag: and now for something completely different

elodieunderglass:

stardust-rain:

homicidal-barber:

awordwasthebeginning:

stardust-rain:

today in ‘i wasn’t actually expecting this, but i really should have expected this’: i do a lot of visa application invites for people for work, and the passport first page for just about every country i’ve seen has clear, black text printed on light/white background with maybe some simple pastel-coloured designs. and for the first almost-three-decades of my life, i was happy in the naive belief that all passports around the world were similar; that one day all countries of the world gathered in Geneva or wherever and formed a Passport Design Committee where they all agreed on the general aesthetics for passports worldwide. 

then, about two weeks back, i saw an american passport for the first time, and it straight up has a giant-ass flag, an eagle, a fucking ear of corn, and the first line of the constitution on it, the text is on glaring multicoloured backdrop, and while i was caught off-guard by it, it is also completely in line with its country of origin, and also i feel like this tells me everything i need to know about america as a nation. 

@languagecrazy @misacoh

for anyone wondering if it’s really that bad

things i have learned since this post:

-the most typical reaction for non-Americans when seeing an American passport for the first time is to google for credibility, because someone is clearly taking the piss. 

–

IT’S WHEAT!!!!!! NOT CORN!!!!!!!!!!!! and Americans are really particular about what you call their Freedom Grain (for the record: in US English, corn refers particularly to one specific grain, i.e. maize, whereas in other Englishes it can mean “any type of grain”. I use one of the many other Englishes on the planet)

-many americans were to not ready to learn that other countries’ passports are actually, like legible, so for comparison here’s a bunch of random examples that i found via google. these are all example/invalid passports

just top of the border, the canadian one:

the brazilian one:

the chinese one, and I’m pretty sure that blurb has copied the American one, sorry ‘bout that:

the british one, in which the bottom left corner kind of has that mid-00′s bedroom wall decal aesthetic going on:

so there you all are. 

The front page of passports around the world are generally designed for easy identification and legibility instead of PATRIOTISM – thus, pale, pastel designs on light background. That doesn’t mean that a passport’s design can’t be fun – both the Canadian and Norwegian ones are having a party under blacklight, the Finnish one has an animated moose, and those are just the ones i know of. 

It’s just that the American passport is really uniquely Like That.

Also, there are new designs for US Passports in the works, apparently. Fingers crossed about what it’ll look like. 

Ah, BUT! You have something to look forward to, in the future! You are looking at the passports of adults who are coming to work in your country, OP, so therefore you are comparing the absolute newest USA passport design to a relatively old-school British design. Americans don’t travel outside the country much, so if they’re at a stage where they get to you, they’re probably rocking the brand-new passport design; British people (to give an example that I know intimately) travel everywhere, like crumbs, and are also allowed to cling to an ancient passport with 6000 stamps in it and a picture of them as a student. The UK passports issued more recently have increased the Graphic Design Skill from the one you’ve shown here, and look more like the most recent American one, which is actually a pretty big departure from the old American one. My kid has one of the new British ones, and it is practically bursting with holographic unicorns and shiny unreadable runes. I think when nations switch to biometric they go a bit off-piste.

Dr Glass, my elderly husband, has the non-biometric British passport and you are right; in addition, that seagull is as sad as a wet sandwich.

I personally have the swanky new American biometric passport with the wheat-eagle. The interior pages, the ones meant for stamps and visas, are equally bold and forceful – they have rainbow canyons and V’s of flying geese and cowboys and other Highly American symbols superimposed upon one another, like a fever dream. There are inspiring quotes about America on every page. It is all in a red/blue gradient. And obviously it has the biometric chip in it. I burst out laughing when I first got it. It was such a departure from the old one! You’re right! It’s ridiculous! You don’t need that much saturation!

But the baby has the very newest British biometric passport, because they are a very new person. And when I first saw it, I felt intimidated and a little alienated by it. It seemed to be heavier than the baby themselves. While it doesn’t have the high saturation of my passport, or the distinctive red/blue gradient, it certainly stands up for itself in the rainbow stakes, and I think it wins more points for baffling nationalistic imagery. Unlike the American red/blue gradient, it has different colors. It has a holographic rainbow sheen on the photo page, like the new banknotes, and the shifting rainbows are drenched in arcane symbolism: gears, a tall sailing ship, the planet, a wreath of DNA. The motif of shamrock-daffodil-rose-thistle is repeated menacingly and in different formats, as are several Masonic sigils of unclear significance. When you hold it up to light, or turn the angle, different weird things happen – the various flowers appear and disappear, as well as strange clear patches that look like mistakes, but which appear to stamp out different bits of code.

The interior pages are brightly colored and feature a host of unidentifiable gentlemen, Ada Lovelace, a bunch of trains, a brief sketch on the gravitational waves on the other side of a black hole maybe??????  and other things that are equally Very British; red postboxes, a map of the Tube; a Multicultural Page that touches on the general idea of rich cultural heritage, interpreted as People of Color and also bagpipes. AND EACH PAGE IS HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF SHAKESPEARE. if you hold it up to the light, every single interior visa page has one of those invisible discs that suddenly lights up with a portrait of the Bard looking smug.

There is the general impression of there being a heavy spell or glamour over the whole thing – or perhaps if you rest it on a glowing science-fiction plinth, it will beam out a tiny blue-tinged 3D projection of the person, that you can rotate and examine by gesturing with your hands.

Honestly, Glassbab’s passport did me a Concern – I just examined it now and I hadn’t seen some of the holographic stuff, and I didn’t like how it suddenly manifested at me. I don’t like to be suddenly loomed at by something that wasn’t there before – not in a 2-D object. I had never seen the Shakespeare before, and he freaked me the fuck out. I feel like jumpscares should be limited to audiovisual media, you know?

Anyway! It doesn’t matter, really. Neither passport speaks of a historical legacy to be particularly proud of; I’m not defending or admiring either of them; it’s more a point of interest, because our household has a large collection of several variant passports. But you’ll have a treat, OP, when the younger folks start coming through, and previously docile passports suddenly upgrade to the biometric high security strain. So you’ll open it up like normal, and it will start flinging 3D wolverines at your face, or asking you for a CAPTCHA, or unfolding into a popup diorama of a Tourist Attraction, or just be full of wasps, or ask you if you’re prepared to accept the GDPR implications of proceeding, or something. What I’m saying here is “be prepared” in case of future jumpscares. The biometric thing has officially let the Graphic Designers of the Nations off the leash.

And when you get a new UK passport coming through, keep an eye out for that Shakespeare. I don’t trust him.