Ah, BUT! You have something to look forward to, in the future! You are looking at the passports of adults who are coming to work in your country, OP, so therefore you are comparing the absolute newest USA passport design to a relatively old-school British design. Americans don’t travel outside the country much, so if they’re at a stage where they get to you, they’re probably rocking the brand-new passport design; British people (to give an example that I know intimately) travel everywhere, like crumbs, and are also allowed to cling to an ancient passport with 6000 stamps in it and a picture of them as a student. The UK passports issued more recently have increased the Graphic Design Skill from the one you’ve shown here, and look more like the most recent American one, which is actually a pretty big departure from the old American one. My kid has one of the new British ones, and it is practically bursting with holographic unicorns and shiny unreadable runes. I think when nations switch to biometric they go a bit off-piste.
Dr Glass, my elderly husband, has the non-biometric British passport and you are right; in addition, that seagull is as sad as a wet sandwich.
I personally have the swanky new American biometric passport with the wheat-eagle. The interior pages, the ones meant for stamps and visas, are equally bold and forceful - they have rainbow canyons and V’s of flying geese and cowboys and other Highly American symbols superimposed upon one another, like a fever dream. There are inspiring quotes about America on every page. It is all in a red/blue gradient. And obviously it has the biometric chip in it. I burst out laughing when I first got it. It was such a departure from the old one! You’re right! It’s ridiculous! You don’t need that much saturation!
But the baby has the very newest British biometric passport, because they are a very new person. And when I first saw it, I felt intimidated and a little alienated by it. It seemed to be heavier than the baby themselves. While it doesn’t have the high saturation of my passport, or the distinctive red/blue gradient, it certainly stands up for itself in the rainbow stakes, and I think it wins more points for baffling nationalistic imagery. Unlike the American red/blue gradient, it has different colors. It has a holographic rainbow sheen on the photo page, like the new banknotes, and the shifting rainbows are drenched in arcane symbolism: gears, a tall sailing ship, the planet, a wreath of DNA. The motif of shamrock-daffodil-rose-thistle is repeated menacingly and in different formats, as are several Masonic sigils of unclear significance. When you hold it up to light, or turn the angle, different weird things happen - the various flowers appear and disappear, as well as strange clear patches that look like mistakes, but which appear to stamp out different bits of code.
The interior pages are brightly colored and feature a host of unidentifiable gentlemen, Ada Lovelace, a bunch of trains, a brief sketch on the gravitational waves on the other side of a black hole maybe?????? and other things that are equally Very British; red postboxes, a map of the Tube; a Multicultural Page that touches on the general idea of rich cultural heritage, interpreted as People of Color and also bagpipes. AND EACH PAGE IS HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF SHAKESPEARE. if you hold it up to the light, every single interior visa page has one of those invisible discs that suddenly lights up with a portrait of the Bard looking smug.
There is the general impression of there being a heavy spell or glamour over the whole thing - or perhaps if you rest it on a glowing science-fiction plinth, it will beam out a tiny blue-tinged 3D projection of the person, that you can rotate and examine by gesturing with your hands.
Honestly, Glassbab’s passport did me a Concern - I just examined it now and I hadn’t seen some of the holographic stuff, and I didn’t like how it suddenly manifested at me. I don’t like to be suddenly loomed at by something that wasn’t there before - not in a 2-D object. I had never seen the Shakespeare before, and he freaked me the fuck out. I feel like jumpscares should be limited to audiovisual media, you know?
Anyway! It doesn’t matter, really. Neither passport speaks of a historical legacy to be particularly proud of; I’m not defending or admiring either of them; it’s more a point of interest, because our household has a large collection of several variant passports. But you’ll have a treat, OP, when the younger folks start coming through, and previously docile passports suddenly upgrade to the biometric high security strain. So you’ll open it up like normal, and it will start flinging 3D wolverines at your face, or asking you for a CAPTCHA, or unfolding into a popup diorama of a Tourist Attraction, or just be full of wasps, or ask you if you’re prepared to accept the GDPR implications of proceeding, or something. What I’m saying here is “be prepared” in case of future jumpscares. The biometric thing has officially let the Graphic Designers of the Nations off the leash.
And when you get a new UK passport coming through, keep an eye out for that Shakespeare. I don’t trust him.
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