The UK Government Home Office has decided to make creativity the central theme for the new British passport, which it redesigns every five years. To do that, it's plucked seven mascots from the worlds of art, architecture, design, and culture.
Through a mix of portraits and drawings of completed works, the passport design, by DeLaRue, honor Shakespeare; artists Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, and John Constable; locomotive designers George and Robert Stephenson; carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison; architects Elisabeth Scott and Giles Gilbert Scott; and mathematicians Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.
It's a sign of the times that a government would think to celebrate its creatives, who rarely attract the same level of attention as actors, athletes, and politicians. Too bad they didn’t think to honor more women while they were at it.
