As someone from outside the USA, I’m surprised a state flag looks this good. I dig it.
There has been a recent movement of states with bad flags trying to improve their image. Illinois might be next and I’m quite excited about it as it’s long overdue!
There’s actually a few nice ones. Check out New Mexico, one of my personal favourites.
…new mexico’s current flag is one of the very best, and certainly beats the heck out of their laughable first effort…
https://lemmy.world/comment/8300053
All good things in America should be treated with suspicion
It’s not uncommon to have religious symbolism in flags. 🇦🇨🇦🇫🇧🇲🇦🇺🇦🇮🇧🇻🇮🇪🇬🇧🇸🇦🇫🇮🇫🇴🇸🇪🇮🇶🏴🏴
Just a quick glance through flag emojis for some.
I just watched CGP Grey’s video about state flags yesterday
Lol he stuck to his “no name on the flag” rule but I recall him saying it was decent. Im from IL so I cant complain about bad flags
He did say no names or words and Colorado’s flag has a letter on it. I would argue that doesn’t fall within the criteria he laid out but oh well.
This video from about a year ago mentions that and I find it convincing: https://piped.video/watch?v=fzUDKYOQ_g0
Now I will admit that I’m a CGP Grey fan and thus biased, but I do think this rebuttal does feel more contrarian than reasoned.
He mentions the historical use of flags was for easy recognition at sea and in war and thus not really needed by established land-locked colonies, but I’d argue recognizability is still the main purpose of flags. I’d actually argue it’s more important now since we see so many more flags in our lifetime than anyone did 200 years ago. How often do you see states listed by or next to their flags now? Take this Wikipedia article on state populations. Do you need the flags to identify each state? Of course not. But they do enforce instant recognition of the state and make it easier to find the state you care about at a glance (so long as the state has a distinct flag).
Beyond that, he mentions the historical meaning of seals, but that need not be lost by a flag redesign. Take the proposal for the Keystone Flag, which reuses the colors of the seal while adding new meaning via symbolism. Both can be used as conversation points to teach about the history of the state, while the latter gains the benefit of being visually distinct.
He also mentions that the point of seals was to be visually intricate not because of the history they represent, but for security purposes. Why, then, do we need what is basically a watermark on our flag? Does it trump the desire for a visually appealing and meaningful flag just because it’s old?
As a final point, Grey has a practical reason for desiring distinct flags: he uses them to visually represent states and countries in his videos. His preference, biased as it may be by his own needs, is not arbitrarily decided.
I still can’t believe they tried to stop this from being adopted because better designs are woke now apparently
Look, let’s be honest. Any change is “woke.” There is this imaginary world that existed 80 years ago that they want to get back to, that was all sunshine and surplus, and they think that any change, particularly progressive change, is bad and “woke.”
Edit: so I realized what instance I was in and that this isn’t the appropriate place for that rant. So I will just say that I really appreciate the changes that are being made to flags, because it seems like the people coming up with the flags in the first place didn’t really get it.
I do like that they took “hexagons are the bestagons” to heart.
Looks like an nfl team logo. I hate how contemporary corporate design it is.
You think that’s bad, check out some of the municipal flags in Japan, especially the ones designed in the early 2000s. The ones based on old clan symbols are fine, but those other ones look like some corpo bro from the 90s commissioned designs by saying “I want it to have more radical swoosh vibes!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipal_flags_of_Tōhoku_region
Some of those must have been straight up inspirations for Star Wars. Looking at you Hachinoche and Kamikita.
Those ones are probably based on historic clan emblems
Weird, it doesn’t feel corporate at all to me. A flat, simple design doesn’t immediately mean something’s corporate.
I don’t have any art background so I can’t really describe why the (non-clan based ones) feel so overly artificial. I think the color choice has a lot to do with it though-- way too many lime greens and oranges for me. Plus some of them are based on letters from the latin alphabet, which almost seems like a reverse weeb thing, ie “western letters are so cool guys!” Not that most of the kana ones are much better-- it’s hard to make lettering on a flag look good.
Maybe the vexillology community would be able to describe it better.
edit: I mistook the comment I replied to as a reply to my comment below, but I’ll leave this up as an explanation into why I find the Japanese flags strange
I can see where you’re coming from (in regards to Japanese prefecture flags) but I still think a lot of them look really good. At least the nicest thing is that they’re all consistent, but still a bit distinct from each other. And a symbol on a blanket is waaaay better than the american seal on a blanket in my opinion :)
