Tuesday, May 7, 2024

On Flag Design Principles

Some people who ponder about flag design like to talk about how important clear symbolism is and how flag supposed to represent something. For organization flags that is partly true as it does have to indicate what organization does. For national flags however it's the other way around.

Most of the national flags consist of nothing more than three stripes. What could three stripes so uniquely represent about any country. Yet most of the flags in the world today are inspired by either Dutch or French flags, both of which use identical colors, just one places them vertically and the other one horizontally. Is that not an epitome of sameness and genericness. 

Symbolism of flags is also both overrated and misleading. Colors of French tricolor currently stand for liberty, equality and brotherhood but they could as well stand for police state, cocaine and bloodshed, or Neptune, Eris and Mars. Generic colors stand for equally generic vaguely good things.

Turns out actual real-life flags do not represent any vexillological principles and considerations. That shows that these principles are fundamentally flawed and unworkable in real life. No matter how meaningful symbolism sounds in theory or on conference of fellow vexillologists, in real life this approach keeps failing. Here I will explain why.


The reason for that is that country overall is a generic mix of people with diverse interests, values, hobbies, aspirations and so on. As much as some want to see countries as united by blood, destiny or some peculiar quality of land, not everyone thinks the same. 

What makes since for you does not necessarily makes sense for everyone in the country. Even if you and your friends and associated can all agree on something, there would still be plenty of those with whom you will not associate to who will not associate with you. 

People tend to make friends of likeminded people. Within such bubbles of friends with common interests' people can often agree on many things. However, step outside the bubble and talk to someone really different and they would think your ideas are rubbish.


That is why national flag designs with clear symbolism only manage to find niche popularity in community that originated them and are often rejected by the country overall. No matter what your community thinks is important, someone else thinks it does not matter. If you want your values and worldview to be enshrined on the flag, then others would want so too, and they will block your flag just to spite you.

Hillary Clinton's supporters consider Trump supporters to be deplorable and Trump supporters consider Hillary supporters NPC. As much as they hate each other and cannot agree on anything, the country needs a flag that can represent them both. No matter what you think it important and valuable, someone else can find it offensive and unacceptable.

That is why most national flags have the most abstract and generic design possible with as ambiguous symbolism as one can muster. That is the only way to ensure that flag will be popular as everyone will think it stands for something they personally care for.


That holds true even for elaborate and sophisticated flags, for example everyone's favorite flag of Venice. Lion of St Mark is possibly one of the most generic things one can pick from a bible. An apostle known for writing one of four versions of Gospel hardly stands for anything at all. Even his name is generic, Mark.

This flag looks good and busy with all sorts of stuff going on it. However, its symbolism is as generic and inoffensive as one can get.

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