Republic of China and the United States of America. Representation through iconic maps
was considered and rejected as they are used often to symbolise international interactions
and they didn’t have the ability to portray subtlety the articles’ interactions for the cover
design. In the introduction there is reference to ‘panda huggers’ and this brought to mind a
cover concept in which national animals were used to represent the countries. The eagle for
the USA as the world’s biggest military and economic power, hovers over a panda only
slightly smaller reflecting China’s economic and military growth. Both loom large compared to
the kangaroo symbolic of Australia, a middle power that has ‘outsourced’ its foreign and
defence policy to the USA and allowed its exports to become hostage to the sensitivities of
the People’s Republic at the same time as becoming a leading critic of its policy. Further
inspiration was provided by several political cartoons that utilise animal symbols. Further
representation of a nations symbols is provided by the use of merging the national flags in the
background. The colour red features strongly as the colour symbolic of China, but also
featuring on the flags of all three countries. Albeit, many world flags use the colour red to
depict courage, revolution, hardiness and valour with the antonym being historical or current
hardships faced by a country.