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Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

theguardian.com

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Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#21
Along the same lines as this new passport here are some cool design proposals from Metric[1] and Snohetta[2] for Norway's new banknotes.

And a couple of concepts from US based designers[3][4] for US currency designs.

[1]http://www.metricdesign.no/work/norges-bank

[2]http://snohetta.com/projects/200-design-proposal-for-norway3...

[3]http://www.travispurrington.com/2014-usd-proposal

[4]http://tyznik.com/currency/

Edit: I thought Travis Purrington was US based but he is actually Zurich based.

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#22
post #16

I've been thinking that the security function served by a passport is very rapidly becoming obsolete (or at least redundant) for travel to most countries in the world. It could be replaced by a plastic photo ID card -- which you could then call a "passport" I suppose. And with strong biometrics, it could be replaced by nothing. Let me explain this with typical cases where a passport is used: (1) You're entering your…

For land/sea crossings between Canada and the US, there exists such a thing -- it's known as an Enhanced Drivers License and contains a barcode and RFID chip in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Drivers_License But the Federal government can't mandate having these machine-readable identifiers on the State-issued drivers licenses, so we're stuck with Passport Cards and Passport Books in addition to the EDL.

They can mandate a lot, or at least bully- the REAL ID act has gotten most states onboard by threatening to not accept noncompliant State IDs for plane travel.

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#24

All cred to Norway for doing their part to make a passport something usable and something a citizen can show with pride. However not a patch on current New Zealand passport design. Everywhere i take mine out for use i get comments about how cool and yet elegant it looks - inside and out.

Your comment made me curious about the design of New Zealand passports, which eventually led me to this atlas of passport covers:

https://www.passportindex.org/

Here's New Zealand's distinctive design:

https://www.passportindex.org/countries/nz.png

But I prefer the elegant minimalism from Switzerland:

https://www.passportindex.org/countries/ch.png

De gustibus non est disputandum. :-)

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#26
post #25

What is the difference between an "immigrant passport" and a "standard passport" ? Are naturalized citizens of Norway not equal to natural citizens of Norway?

They are for legal residents without the ability to get proper documents from their home countries. My guess is primarily "refugees" that haven't gone through the full citizenship process.

https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/immigrants-passport-and-...

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#27
post #25

What is the difference between an "immigrant passport" and a "standard passport" ? Are naturalized citizens of Norway not equal to natural citizens of Norway?

They are for legal residents without the ability to get proper documents from their home countries. My guess is primarily "refugees" that haven't gone through the full citizenship process. https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/immigrants-passport-and-...

Got it, thanks, in hindsight, I should have googled it myself. I've never seen a refugee travel document / refugee passport be called an "immigrant passport" before, but that's cool, and more importantly, it's great to see Norway hasn't created a "second class citizen" category, and that all citizens are truly equal, at least from a Passport/Documentation perspective.

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#29
post #6

I've been thinking that the security function served by a passport is very rapidly becoming obsolete (or at least redundant) for travel to most countries in the world. It could be replaced by a plastic photo ID card -- which you could then call a "passport" I suppose. And with strong biometrics, it could be replaced by nothing. Let me explain this with typical cases where a passport is used: (1) You're entering your…

Your from a country in which privacy isn't particularly valued I take it? I think you're heavily overestimating how much data is available to governments.

Why? I've seen such a system in action - based on the passport number, they pull up a digital copy of that passport, including the information on it and photo, as well as the list of dates when you traveled in/out of the country.

Each country definitely has something like this for their own citizens, and within the EU this information is shared (probably quite freely) between frontier agents and the police. A driver's license from the Netherlands can quickly be checked for authenticity/validity in Germany for example...

They don't need that much data, just photo and name, ID numbers, maybe the registered address(es).

Based on that, if you have any criminal history, you can bet they'll see it anywhere as it is priority information.

Re: Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

#30

All cred to Norway for doing their part to make a passport something usable and something a citizen can show with pride. However not a patch on current New Zealand passport design. Everywhere i take mine out for use i get comments about how cool and yet elegant it looks - inside and out.

Your comment made me curious about the design of New Zealand passports, which eventually led me to this atlas of passport covers: https://www.passportindex.org/ Here's New Zealand's distinctive design: https://www.passportindex.org/countries/nz.png But I prefer the elegant minimalism from Switzerland: https://www.passportindex.org/countries/ch.png De gustibus non est disputandum. :-)

Ugh EU passports look so bad with that butt ugly bordeaux color :D
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