Dezeen Magazine

Dezeen launches Brexit Passport Design Competition

Dezeen launches unofficial competition to redesign the UK passport with £1,000 top prize

What should the UK passport look like after Brexit? Dezeen today launches a contest to come up with a new design for the citizenship document.

We are looking for designs that present a positive vision of the post-Brexit UK to the world, and that represent all its citizens.

There is a top prize of £1,000 for the winning design plus £500 for second place and £250 for third place. The competition is free to enter.

London's Design Museum
The winning passport designs will be exhibited at both London's Design Museum and Clerkenwell Design Week

Winners will be selected by a jury consisting of:

Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London;
Rohan Silva, founder of Second Home and former government policy adviser;
Margaret Calvert, graphic designer;
Oliver Wainwright, architecture and design critic for The Guardian;
› Anita Taylor, dean of Bath School of Art and Design and chair of the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design;
Sharon Hodgson, MP for Washington and Sunderland West, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Art, Craft and Design in Education;
Marcus Fairs, founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen.

The winners will be published on Dezeen and exhibited at the Design Museum in London. A wider selection of entries will be shown at Clerkenwell Design Week in London in May 2017.

The current British passport with a burgundy soft cover
Currently citizens of the UK carry a European Union passport with a burgundy soft cover

The competition is open to everyone, with professional designers, non-designers and students in the UK and abroad welcome to enter.

Judges will be looking for a combination of a strong overall idea, good execution, practicality and a convincing justification for their design.

Updated British passport design
Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and other creatives feature on the pages of the current UK passport

"The EU referendum vote divided the country, with the majority of creatives voting to remain in the EU," said Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

"Whether we like it or not, Brexit is going to happen. So it's time to start thinking about what image the UK wants to project and trying to create a positive vision for the future. A new passport could help achieve that."

The old blue British passport
Some people have called for the post-Brexit passport to be blue, the colour used for British passports before the UK joined the EEC, now the European Union

The competition follows Dezeen's Brexit Design Manifesto – a message to the government about the importance of the design sector to the UK's culture, society and economy.

This is not an official competition and the winning designs are unlikely to be adopted by the government, but we will present them to the Home Office and invite a response.

For full details of the competition, including rules and the entry form, visit www.dezeen.com/passport ›

Norway's recently redesigned passport
Norway's passport, recently redesigned by Neue Design Studio, includes minimal illustrations of landscapes from around the country