I think these ads are a powerful use of national flags, given that they’re normally a symbol of pride. That’s been turned on its head here. Stunning stuff.

I came across eight of them and they’re all equally good.

Some information about the work, pasted from here.

Grande Reportagem is a Portuguese news magazine that is recognised for its investigative reports and excellent photo-journalism. In 2004 the magazine switched from being an independent monthly publication to a weekly supplement in the Saturday edition of the daily national newspaper Diário de Notícias, owned by the same publishing company.The creative challenge of the campaign was to reaffirm the magazine’s unchanged commitment to serious journalism by focusing on topics that are important for people’s understanding of the world today.

This led the creative team to the concept “Meet the world” and to the idea of using flags of different nations as vehicles to transmit it. In each case, the colours that appear on various national flags were used to symbolise a social or political issue that is specific to the country in question.