7

Remembering the roots.

In about an hour, Malaysia would turn 51.

It’s time we cher­ish the moment, put aside all our dif­fer­ences, our insuf­fi­cien­cies, our beliefs, and cel­e­brate what we all have in com­mon — being proud cit­i­zens of Malaysia.

This year, tehCpeng.net would be pay­ing trib­ute to Mohamad Hamzah, an archi­tect, who 61 years ago, designed Malaysia’s national flag. I guess nobody would be more proud to have his own design paraded all over the coun­try 24/7 for 51 whole years.

It’s every designer’s wet dream I tell you.

Flag atop Sultan Iskandar building

Like this humon­gous one erected only once a year every Merdeka month atop the Sul­tan Iskan­dar Building.

To com­mem­o­rate his achieve­ment, I tried to repli­cate how would his sketch look like as he made a pro­posal for a flag design com­pe­ti­tion held in 1947. Okay — he might not have used Eng­lish in his sketches, and the Jalur Gemi­lang isn’t known as the Jalur Gemi­lang until 1997.

Also, Mohamad Hamzah first designed his flag to have a five-pointed star instead of the 14-pointed one on the flags we see fly­ing today.

merdeka flag sketch

So for today’s sake, let’s just assume he did all that on his sketches.

Happy 51st Birth­day Malaysia!

by ember in General, Happenings, Life on 30th August, 2008 at 11pm, 1 year, 6 months ago

7 Comments

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  2. cdasonours.. said on 31st August, 2008 at 10pm

    Man… by the day.. I find your designs really inspir­ing and fan­tas­tic. Wish I could have those design skills of y

    Reply
  3. ember said on 31st August, 2008 at 11pm

    @Eli James, Thank you. =D

    @cdason, Wow you should stop prais­ing me like that. =P I’m fast run­ning out of ways to say “Thank you, I appre­ci­ate it” XD

    Guess I just said it.

    Reply
  4. cjude87 said on 31st August, 2008 at 11pm

    I think that guy copied the Amer­i­can flag when he drew the red and white stripes, haha…kidding!

    Reply
  5. ember said on 31st August, 2008 at 11pm

    Now that’s a mat­ter of much con­tro­ver­sial debate! Frankly though, I have no idea of the sig­nif­i­cance of it being sim­i­lar to the Stars and Stripes. =(

    Reply
  6. wying said on 2nd September, 2008 at 9pm

    *cor­rec­tion* Happy 45th Birth­day, Malaysia. XD
    Happy 51th Birth­day to Perseku­tuan Tanah Melayu. XD
    (its a com­pli­cated design and i fumed in silence every­time im asked to draw and colour the flag when i was a kid.) XD

    Reply
  7. ember said on 3rd September, 2008 at 5pm

    *cor­rec­tion of cor­rec­tion* Happy 51st Birth­day, Perseku­tuan Tanah Melayu.

    Malaysia’s birth­day isn’t until the 16th of Sep­tem­ber. =P

    That is, if you wanna get really picky about the dates. XD

    And yea, I never get that 14-pointed star right! It was really a night­mare to draw. =(

    Reply

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