I love flags.  As a child my favourite book was one that had the flags of every nation of the world.  I had pretty much forgotten this passion until 2015 when New Zealand decided to have a referendum on changing their national banner. To say I got a little obsessed is an understatement.

 

In the end I had two flags seriously considered, the black and white fern below, which made it to the shortlist of 50 from 10,000 submitted.  The NZ public were presented with a shortlist of 40, which didn't include this flag but a green and black alternative of mine, which I had submitted at the last moment as an alternative.

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In the end the NZ public wisely decided not to change their flag, as the proposed alternative was very much a case of design by committee. See here to view the Wikipedia page on the referendum.

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In the midst of this obsession, I set about designing a flag for my new home town of Stroud.  It was just an artistic exercise that lay dormant in the recesses of my laptop for a year until it was tongue in cheekily presented to the good citizens of Stroud as a post Brexit call to unity in 2016.

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See below a few other flags I have designed for a unified Holyland, a tea totting England and Northern Ireland who surprisingly don't have an official national flag.