Ideas Worth Spreading
It’s a slogan you will see if ever you come across TED Conferences LLC. This media organisation posts talks and presentations online for free distribution. I became aware of them many years ago, while searching on YouTube for a video about science, that led to a video about rock climbing, that then led to a video about cats and so on until finally, a TED Talk. So began a long and fruitful association.
TED talks range in topic from How to Speak so People Want to Listen — a work in progress for some of us — to, Can You Tell if a Kid is Lying? — an occult art at best — to, You Don’t Find Happiness, You Create It. From physics to free time TED covers a wealth of almost everything. Personally, a favourite is a talk by a young man named Roman Mars. Roman is radio producer and podcaster who has extreme interest in how things are designed and an almost unhealthy fixation on flags.
Vexillology is — to put it simply —the study of flags, their history, their symbolism and their usage. During his TED talk Roman’s honey smooth tones recount the five basic rules of good flag design.
- Keep it simple
- Use meaningful symbolism
- Use two to three basic colours
- No lettering
- Be distinctive
The mind of God is unknowable, and the ways of the universe are obscure, but occasionally you are struck by a happy coincidence. This morning, while taking a break from writing this article, I took a quiet stroll past the classrooms in Westcourt. One room was particularly obvious because of the type of noise seeping through the walls of this thankfully air-conditioned room. In looking through the closed window: flags! Simple, symbolic, basic colours without letters and, distinctive. Sitting in front of an on-screen display are some twenty-five — or so — year eights enthusiastically and noisily accessing laptops and phones, pressing keyboards and touch screens, competing to answer the question — What country does this flag belong to? Amazing!
So, back to the TED Talk. Highly praised is a flag that is seemingly so common in the city of Chicago you can’t turn in any direction without seeing it. As the images on the screen fade from one flag back to the narrator, then to another flag and once again to Roman Mars’ smiling face, he extends the principles of flag design to design in general. Simplicity, deep meaning, being thoughtful about colours, uniqueness, and don’t have writing you can’t read. In this distillation I find so many parallels with St Edmund’s.
Our College Vision states:
St Edmund’s College, an inclusive Catholic community, enriched by Ipswich culture and grounded in the Edmund Rice Tradition, educates and inspires young men to live simply and to make a difference.
We have the simplicity of our Catholic community, the uniqueness of our Ipswich culture, the deep meaning of our College traditions, symbols and rituals always set to a background of blue and white. Finally, with luck, I haven’t produced a musing that you can’t read.
If our vision is the flag that flies above us, the banner under which we tread, then surely our design is true.
Ray Celegato, Principal
