5 — The World Passport6 The World Passport On May 25, 1948, American war veteran Garry Davis...
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KABK — The Hague, Netherlands Participants : Thomas Bouillet, Elena Peralta, Jamie Chang, Olga Umpeleva, Jovana Jocić, Arnaud Chemin, Huw Williams, Céline Hurka, Renan Rosatti, Renan Rosatti, Nina Botthof, Jan Šindler, Ruggero Magrì. — The World Passport 5
5 — The World Passport6 The World Passport On May 25, 1948, American war veteran Garry Davis walked into the US embassy in Paris to surrender his passport, renounce his American
Participants : Thomas Bouillet, Elena Peralta, Jamie Chang, Olga
Umpeleva, Jovana
Joci, Arnaud Chemin, Huw Williams, Céline Hurka, Renan Rosatti,
Renan Rosatti, Nina Botthof, Jan Šindler, Ruggero Magrì.
— The World Passport
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The World Passport On May 25, 1948, American war veteran Garry
Davis walked into the US
embassy in Paris to surrender his passport, renounce his American
citizenship, declare himself to be a ‘citizen of the world’, and
began to travel the world with his self-issued document.
After the horrors of the Second World War, the concept of a world
passport appealed to many as an apolitical document of identity
based on the Article 13-2 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his
own, and to return to his country.’ Davis believed that a world
passport would be an important step towards bringing this to pass,
a document that would overcome nationalism and repression, a symbol
of ‘the fundamental oneness and unity of the human
community’.
More than half a century later, hundreds of thousands of World
Passports were issued, among them such notable personalities as
Albert Camus, Albert Einstein and Richard Buckminster Fuller.
Anyway can apply for the World Passport by mail, however, because
of no official recognition of the document, its function as a
travel document is limited. The passport itself looks, for lack of
a better word, stately, and true to its title, contains text in
English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and
Esperanto.
I have asked the students of the master programme TypeMedia at the
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) to design the cover of the
World Passport. At the TypeMedia, students are confronted with
working with many languages drawing typefaces and using them in
context, and it seemed as a challenge to visualise a document that
has ambition to be extremely inclusive and universal. Here are 12
proposals for the updated World Passport.
Peter Biak, KABK
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Thomas Bouillet, FR The idea of the cover was to make mul- tiple
lines which represents all the coun- tries of the world from
different starting point. All lines meet in the middle; a sym-
bolic encounter of different cultures, and peoples. The background
image is creat- ed by translating common greetings in 24 most
spoken languages.
Jan Šindler, CZ I wanted to make passport for citizen of the world,
presenting the universal data that capture the essence of this
planet. The first layer on the cover presents the constant Earth
data, they are embossed into the cover, and are not expected to
change. The second layer presents the variable data of current
state of the Earth, on the day the passport is being produced, is
printed on top of it. The last dimension is the back of the
passport that explains all the graphs.
Ruggero Magrì, IT Who are we and where do we come from? The cover
maps the most populat- ed areas of the world, subtly rendering the
available data. Too often prejudices and stereotypes are based on
our culture and our place of birth, borders, like pre- conceptions
need to be broken down.
Elena Peralta, ES The people who are in need of the world passport
are most likely people who come from less privileged places. Some
of them will not have had access to an education and will not know
how to read and/or write therefore the passport does not have any
written word, instead it is easily identified with a pictogram. I
chose the gnomonic projection of sphere showing the shortest route
between two points on earth, bringing people togeth- er, crossing
barriers and borders.
Jamie Chang, CA This concept was created after consider- ing
accepted representations of a global community (e.g. the globe,
terra sym- bol, etc). The design itself takes inspi- ration from
the Olympic rings designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1913. As the
symbol itself would be considered akin to a coat-of-arms, or logo,
I felt it more appropriate to design something more abstract, and
could be developed further as a mark long term. Since language
denotes culture/country/linguistic back- ground, the cover is left
blank to prevent any notion that any one is more domi- nant than
the other.
Olga Umpeleva, RU The World Passport is designed to give everyone
ability to move freely across borders, so I decided to show graphic
representation of borders and bound- aries that are typically
represented in cartography. This should be the true document that
allows crossing and tran- scending borders.
Jovana Joci, RS The purpose of the World passport is to provide
each individual, irrespective of their nationality, the same right
to trav- el. I decided to visualise the inequalities and injustices
that traditional passports represent. The dark colours mark the
countries which require additional visa to travel, the light
coloured countries are can travel visa-free. I used the Passport
Index ranking to organise this map.
hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola
hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola
hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola
hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola
hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola hola
hola hola hola hola
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Arnaud Chemin, FR Most national passports, show an em- blem of the
represented nation in the layout’s centre, and to follow the
conven- tions, I used different writing scripts to build a circular
form, which represents the earth and languages spoken around the
world. The displayed languages are there most commonly spoken, and
I in- cluded some scripts like Hebrew to bring more diversity in
the overall composi- tion. Choosing a typeface for this compo-
sition was a major challenge, as there is not one adequate font
that supports all writing scripts. I mainly looked for the same
style, modulation, contrast amount and weights.
Huw Williams, UK The concept behind the design of the passport was
to represent and visualise the most commonly spoken language on
each continent though a headline text and decorative pattern. The
pattern itself is constructed out a single letter from each
continents corresponding lan- guage (English, Russian, Arabic,
Chinese, and Swahili), giving their visual rep- resentation a
unique texture and densi- ty. By bringing these languages together,
we can see the world’s diversity in cultur- al and linguistic
differences.
Céline Hurka, DE This proposal design for the world pass- port
breaks with the conventions of the travel documents, and no text is
used on the cover. The illustration is be print- ed white on mirror
foil paper which will allow the passport to always appear dif-
ferently depending on its surrounding. All map globe projections
distort the proportions of the continents and often favour western
hemisphere. Instead of standard map projection, I chose to show
various ways to translate three dimen- sional globe to the two
dimensional il- lustration, with the intention to make a commentary
on the issue of unequal representation.
Renan Rosatti, BR My version of the world passport aims to avoid
representations of power and authority, such as flags and badges.
Language itself can also be a symbol of cultural power. Because of
that, the idea was not to emphasise the most domi- nant languages
in the world, but instead to exhibit a sample of greetings in more
than 100 different languages, which have very few speakers around
the globe. The background image is generated au- tomatically
according to the person’s place of birth. These geographic level
curves highlight each individual’s origin and identity, but also
what unites us all, by showing the Earth without any man- made
borders.
Nina Botthof, AT The world passport was created to guar- antee the
inalienable right to travel for everyone. This makes it
particularly val- uable for stateless people, as they have no
official nationality and therefore of- ten no travel documents.
This is why my draft puts special emphasis on minority groups,
which are affected by state- lessness: Their languages are featured
on the cover, along with the languages used in in the passport
itself. Instead of the typical coat of arms, which is often shown
on passports, the symbolism of a compass is used. It represents the
free- dom to travel.
world passport passeport m
pasaules pase dunyo
pa sp
or ti
é Kam w
an
at kntte Ái jiya já’a?
W aako
be
G
oeiendag
i Alduye
N
ro, oro, oro U
W un bi
inam
l w
abbakum allh
e M u eri dâ
Τσες ποουν Tu kasa she?
M au sung kha
εn lkpasi N
ts’e dit’ae? Ja m eneno
Tervettulem aa
do egbe
iyar
zaanm
q duq tanq m a
Shalam u
lèntè w è
N
edjü
asam pat a edow
lè ò w
é Kam w
an
at kntte Ái jiya já’a?
W aako
be
G
oeiendag
i Alduye
N
ro, oro, oro U
W un bi
inam
l w
abbakum allh
e M u eri dâ
Τσες ποουν Tu kasa she?
M au sung kha
