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In recent months I've been interested in flags. Allow me to provide a few hyperlinks for your browsing.

-http://www.nava.org/
-http://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/
-NAVA: Good Flag, Bad Flag
-[Image]A graphic to illustrate good flag design.
-[Image]My favorite custom flag. An IMEU flag, OC by Masissar(?) on reddit somewhere.

I was working on that sliver of graphic on my profile in MSPaint* while listening to the Hello Internet podcast episode 16, in which there is a lengthy conversation regarding flags and flag design. This got me hooked. I found myself VERY interested in vexillology by the end of the conversation, and ever more interested by the end of the podcast episode. That aside, is anyone else interested in flags? There are dozens of us! Dozens!

*j/k, it was GIMP

Me! I find studying flags more interesting than designing them, obviously not because of my art skills <.<...>.>......

I've mentioned it once or twice. I've always been pretty interested in flags. I visit /r/vexillology/ every now and again as well. I have some quizzes over at goodreads I made a while ago if you want to test yourself.

My Favorite flag would be Reich war flag:

Whilst my least favorite flag would be the Lofa County flag which was probably made using Clip Art and MS Paint:

 

Fun Fact: England technically has no official flag.

I'm not so much interested in flag design, but I'm a sucker for both heraldry and naval flags. I found the links pretty darn interesting, especially from a world-building point of view - where the flag is basically the symbol for a fictional nation or organization.

Have you made any flags of your own?

(Also, I learned a new word today. Yay.)

I've attempted to make flags before, I get to a point where my designs are either too simple or too complicated, so I scrap the designs and work on something else.

You could always start complicated and then simplify, or start simple and then complicate?

Haha, I know what you're getting at though - designing any kind of symbol is a struggle between cramming too much meaning into it and making it cluttered looking, or not enough and leaving it looking half-hearted.

Which other flags do you consider well designed then? (The example in your OP was pretty cool, how the central circle was due to layering colors rather than an actual border)

New Mexico flag is probably the best; both in my opinion and by popular opinion. It's original, has symbolic meaning from the native American tribe which used to reside there (hence the sun-like symbolism in the middle) no words, no overcomplicated items and traditionally nontraditional colors - if you saw the flag out of all other flags in the world, you'd be able to say immediately "That's the flag of New Mexico."



The flag of France is also nice, but in my opinion it's a bit too simple. Any flag that doesn't use red, white, and blue with each other is quite an original flag. Any flag that doesn't use green, red, and yellow with each other is also probably a nice flag. The traditional colors like yellow, green, red, black, white, blue - it's difficult to find any flag that DOESN'T use these colors. I suppose a nice purple flag with meaningful orange symbolism would be a nice flag xD

In the end, it depends on how simple, yet meaningful the flag is. The few basic rules are listed on the nava site somewhere. There's 5 rules like "If a child can't draw it from memory, it's a bad flag" and "use no more than four colors" and "especially no words, complicated shapes, etc."

Damn. That's a really cool sun design. It even incorporates the four cardinal directions, which I think was a major part of Native American religious beliefs, if I recall correctly.

I think, given the limitations of both 'simple' and 'unique' when there are already so many flags in existence, it's pretty darn hard to come up with a really good quality, original flag.

On another tangent, my favorite probably has to be the Jolly Roger, because, well, pirates.

The problem I have with the jolly roger is it seems a little bit to much on the detailed side, with the skull's shape and teeth, as well as the lining of the bones involved. It looks cool, definitely one of my favorites, but there's never really any consistency. The skull and cross bones is a good template, I think the bones can be substituted with other items/objects of meaning, as well as the skull - so overall a good flag design, but from a perspective of refinement, it's not as good as it COULD be.

What I liked about it is actually the inconsistency itself. I liked the fact that you could vary almost everything - the details aren't really important, as long as the white bones on black background is there - so it's become a very widespread symbol with a rather badass meaning behind it.

You're right though - the amount of detail that a skull usually requires is somewhat problematic from a stylistic standpoint. I guess the symbol is just so ubiquitous that I never really noticed until you pointed it out.

On the subject, but off into new territory, pirates would raise their jolly rogers to hail merchant ships, right? (rhetorical) - when the flag was raised however, the pirates would not violently kill all members on board, in fact there was hardly any killing. The jolly roger meant that "If you give us what we want, we'll let you go free." | after all, if the jolly roger meant all crew members were going to die - they would all fight to the death against the pirates, which isn't what the pirates wanted at all.

Isn't the skull and crossbones a modern pirate flag? If I recall correctly, there were no pirate groups which used the skull and crossbones as a jolly roger from the 1300s - mid1700s. I may be wrong though. I'm a bit rusty on my pirate history :P

If I recall correctly, pirates hoisted the black sail to signal that if the merchant ship tried to flee, then no mercy would be given. Though its meaning probably varied across historical time periods and locations. You're right about the modern pirate flag though - the actual skull and crossbones wasn't anywhere near as commonplace in history as it is in media today. The term 'Jolly Roger' actually refers to a different sort of pirate flag altogether - an entire skeleton on a black background, flown by a pirate allegedly named 'Jolly Roger'.

However, I think that thanks to modern day media, when you say 'pirate flag', everyone automatically thinks of the skull and crossbones design. It's a lot cooler looking and simpler than the entire skeleton, and the white/black theme makes it immediately recognizable too.

I found this from Reddit: https://medium.com/re-form/what-the-flag-says-6b48ef093e6f

No idea why BMW would sponsor it, but it's an interesting read nonetheless (Even if it is rather simple).