New US Passport

The new US passport looks ok on the outside. But open it to any page and be visually assaulted by a garish drawing of some patriotic icon. It immediately made me think of The Cobert Report. It looks like it was designed by Disney.

From NYT:
“It is like being given a coloring book that your brother already colored in,” said Michael Bierut, of the design firm Pentagram in New York City. A passport, not unlike a scrapbook, gets its allure from gradually accruing exotic stamps, with the blank pages holding the promise of future adventure, he and other designers said. But they find that the new jumble of pictures detracts from that."

Comment from Gadling:
"Seriously - not only is it poorly designed and unattractive, but do we need such an overload of flashy Americana on a document that we might be taking into countries where we Americans are not... well, let's just say not necessarily so popular?"

Comments from The Consumerist:
"Basic propaganda. And, only in a country in which freedom is slipping away does the government need to declare so loudly that freedom is alive and well."

"You know, I have no problem with people and countries being patriotic but there's a line for that. This design crossed over over that line with a ramp and an 80 mph run."

"I got one of these recently. It looks like it belongs on the set of the Colbert Report. Everyone I've shown it too has agreed that it's excessively patriotic to the point of being annoying."

"I think the last thing an American traveling abroad wants is a custom agent seeing a passport decked out in "America is better that you" bullshit on every page..."