Design by Committee: a flag, an arm, and a bad Photoshop job
It might surprise those of you who are younger than forty-five that the Canadian flag - maple leaf and all - didn't exist before 1965. The story of the flag's design and adoption, amid angry protests and fractious debate, is a good one and an example of the best kind of Canadian compromise. What is truly remarkable about the final design is that, given the old joke that "design by committee" generally results in bland and uninspired work, the politicians on the Flag Committee were able to present a design whose simplicity and beauty made it an instant classic for millions of Canadians.
The rightness of the new flag would become evident through its ubiquity in the ensuing years. Even the wordmark logo for the Government of Canada now consists solely of the word "Canada" with the flag flying from the letter "d". This logo has even made it to space, boldly printed on the space shuttles' Canadian-made robotic arms.
These arms, known domestically as the Canadarm (but as "the robotic manipulator arm" to the rest of the world, much to Canadians' chagrin), juts cheekily into the frame of many photos taken from the shuttle. On the International Space Station, the next-generation "Canadarm2" proudly represents Canadian high technology in space, and for this reason a picture of the Canadarm2 was included in Canada's new guide for prospective citizens. The problem faced by the guide's creators - no doubt a committee - was that in the photo supplied by NASA (top and middle right), the "Canada" logo is upside down and barely visible. Their solution? Digitally superimpose a full frontal view of the logo (bottom right). Beyond the ethical implications, the manipulation is troubling because it was so poorly executed; the designer made little effort to match the inserted logo to the original scene. [Note: as far as I can tell, this has not been reported elsewhere online. You heard it here first!] At least this assures the Canadian public that, were the government to engage in any Stalin-esque photo retouching, no one would be fooled.
Perhaps this incident demonstrates nothing more than that committees cannot always be trusted to make smart design decisions. In any event, a photo meant to showcase Canada's high tech prowess ended up revealing an embarrassing lack of high tech prowess.
See the doctored image toward the bottom of this page, and an undoctored NASA image, actually taken a split second before or after, here.
