Waiting in line at the airport going through customs you have time. Lots of time, sometimes… Time to notice things that you wouldn’t normally notice. Things like… passport colors…
Remember playing the license plate game when on a road trip or stuck in traffic? Just imagine the passport version of that game. You may have noticed that there really are just four major colors when it comes to passports: red, green, blue and black however like many things in life; things aren’t always as they seem.
King Henry V of England is credited for implementing what some consider the first true passport; references to these documents can be found in a 1414 Act of Parliament. At the start of the mid-nineteenth century the fast growth of railway infrastructure and wealthy people in Europe led to large increases in the amount of international travel but reduced the use of the passport system for almost thirty years prior to World War I. During the last part of the nineteenth century, up to World War I, passports were not even required; crossing a border was a more straightforward procedure in Europe. However, during World War I, European governments began border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people. This remained after the war, becoming a standard procedure.
The League of Nations held a conference on passports in 1920 named, the Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and Through Tickets. It was here that passport guidelines and a general booklet design was started, followed up by conferences in 1926 and 1927. True passport standardization began in 1980 though by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). A recent standard is for biometric passports to authenticate the identity of travelers. The passport’s critical information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, like smartcards. The passport booklet calls for an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data.
Hrant Boghossian is vice president of the Arton Group, a group that runs an interactive passport database called the Passport Index. In an interview with Business Insider he says, “While rules that dictate how passports must appear, including their size and format, are issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), governments around the world can choose the color and design of their national document and there are ‘many possible scenarios’ that explain why they choose to go with a certain color”
Most passport books for the countries of the European Union (EU) tend to be burgundy, and those from Caricom (Caribbean Community and Common Market) states use blue.
“Some could argue that the burgundy red is due to a past communist history,” said Mr. Boghossian, and that blue passports may be symbolic of the New World for countries in North America, South America and Oceania. Also, “The passport of Turkey has changed to burgundy as it hopes to join the EU,” he also claimed. For some, the chosen passport color is religiously significant. Muslim countries: Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia use different shades of green. However the Islamic Republic of Iran uses a burgundy color. “Most Islamic states use green passports because of the importance of the color in their religion,” Boghossian said. Green is believed to have been a favorite color of the Prophet Muhammad, is “symbol of nature and life”, and is seen on several of the national flags of Islamic countries such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Switzerland has a bright red passport with the Swiss cross on it, the brand voice of the Swiss in many ways. Singapore, a bright orange/reddish cover and a one year max temporary Canadian passport comes in white. Of course like most grand scale operations things come down to practicality and availability. “Passport production is a highly controlled process, and only few companies around the world are doing it, the cardstock used for passport covers is usually supplied by a third party and only comes in certain color variations to meet the standards” Mr. Boghossian said.
Citizen of Canada, Britain, the US, China or Norway? Access to a UV light? You are in for a treat because these passports feature artwork on their pages that appear under UV light. Norway actually had Neue Design Studio create new passports which come in your choice of white, turquoise or red. Its pages feature minimalist interpretations of the country’s most striking landscapes and scenery, featuring an image of the Northern Lights, made visible on the pages when illuminated under UV light.
Finland definitely raised the bar for cool though when in 2012 it introduced a feature in its passport using the pages to feature an animated running moose when the pages are flipped as shown in this YouTube clip.