The four stamps are designed to represent the first major international event held in the young nation of Singapore. In three of the designs, the stamps achieves this by arranging the flags of the 31 participating countries in various forms—circular, a roughly rectangular block and a map of the world respectively—that symbolically suggest their equal status. A fourth stamp was also created with a similar design approach but with only the names of the countries in a radial arrangement. Gold was used to convey the prestige of the occasion, while the flags were arranged in the most attractive manner as an alphabetical order meant the colours and crests frequently clashed.