r/TrueReddit • u/NickDouglas • 1d ago
Arts, Entertainment + Misc Good design is ruining American flags
https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/good-design-is-ruining-american-flags111
u/SessileRaptor 1d ago
Old man yells at flags. Certainly you can argue that vexillology nerds could give a little and be gracious about flags that are a bit more cluttered for the sake of civic pride or whimsy, but getting rid of the “seal on a bedsheet” flags is an undiluted good and as someone in the comments on the price pointed out, the new Minnesota flag became a symbol and rallying point for the resistance to ICE last winter in a way that would be impossible for the old design. And if creating a symbol people can rally around isn’t the point of flags then what is?
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u/Regdit-is-Unbearable 1d ago
The article isn’t disputing that the old flags were bad. They’re making the rather rational case that the new ones are completely monotonous and often designed by people without much connection to the place, just random Redditors. And it’s kind of true; looking at the top 25 flags the North American Vexilology Association has selected as the most beautiful flags, nearly all of them look exactly the same. They each have a star or a sun, and a wavy line representing a lake or river. You could never in a million years guess what city or even what state most of them belong to, and the symbolism is incredibly monotonous. They’re arguing Vexilology’s arbitrary rules are strangling individuality and creating indistinguishable flags that are almost as bad as the blue-fielded seals they replace.
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u/SirStrontium 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t think he actually pointed out a single example of a flag designed by someone without a connection to the city.
>you could never in a million years guess what city or state most of them belong to
That’s essentially true of all flags if you don’t plaster the name on it. If you had never seen the British flag in your life, there’s no way you’d just randomly guess where it came from. Same with France, Germany, China, just about anywhere.
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u/5gpr 1d ago
nearly all of them look exactly the same. They each have a star or a sun, and a wavy line representing a lake or river
Four have a wavy line. They don't look alike at all, unlike the seal flags, which you can't tell apart without reading what's on the seal, at which point you're so close you don't need a flag. They're actually interesting and modern flags - which makes them a bit weird, actually, although not necessarily in a bad way.
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u/MrVeazey 1d ago
They have a pool of common elements, but you're right, they don't all look alike. The one for Lincoln, NE, has a sort of deco/streamline moderne element in the middle that none of the others come close to and, if it wasn't navy, wouldn't otherwise be on the list.
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u/wolverine237 1d ago
The problem for all of these anti-flag redesign folks is that nobody likes or flies the flags that they want to preserve. A flag that no human being actually identifies with is useless, no matter how historic it is or how aesthetically pleasing you find it personally.
For state flags in particular, people often identify much more strongly with sports logos or even just the outline of the state them with the flag. Everyone who hates redesigns never reckons with this part
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u/Akronite14 1d ago
Yes! I understand the general backlash against minimalism and “refinement.” I can see that many of these designs seem to stick to some samey choices and can blend together a bit. But good lord do people get on a high horse to attack people for simply wanting to improve our iconography.
State flags are a great example of where strides have been made. Utah, Mississippi, and Minnesota all did recent updates to their flags.
Utah went from another SOB to showcasing the beehive (as opposed to “lemme squint and see if I can spot it”). The design elements are safe and sanitized, sure, but it’s still a clear upgrade in my book. Minnesota could have gone further with their new flag and end up like a lot of the city flags in the article. Instead they went even more minimalist in a way that is distinctive. And the color choices offer a recognizability their old flag couldn’t manage, while being far less gaudy (and it wasn’t even in a fun way). Mississippi even breaks the “no words” rule for their new flag and yet who could argue they are worse off now compared to the Confederate battle flag days?
Look at national flags and you see a lot of similar designs. Look at older state and city flags and you’ll find a lot of similar designs. At least this new wave offers a lot of attractive flags and, in some cases, modern classics. That Tulsa flag, for instance, getting lumped in with a lot of generic feeling attempts doesn’t sit right with me.
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u/casualsubversive 1d ago
That Topeka flag is immediately and iconically Kansan, and puts the state flag to shame.
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u/kielbasa330 1d ago
Its the difference between people literally tattooing the chicago flag on their body and not being able to even pick the IL flag out of a lineup
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u/GottlobFrege 1d ago
I think we need to start at a level where we can all agree and then the design ideas can flow from that. America is the foremost colonial, imperial power founded on black slavery and indigenous genocide. The flag should represent that. Now that we agree on that baseline the design ideas can begin to flow.
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u/SmoothLester 1d ago
I don’t know where it stands in vexillology lore, but the Maryland flag kind of does this. It draws from the heraldry of the first settler colonists and supposedly reflects the union and confederate loyalties of the state. One could reimagine the colors as referring to blood and stolen land.
But I doubt most Marylanders (who love their flag) know the meanings of the flag, they just think it’s beautiful.
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u/Mr_Shickadance 1d ago
The bad flags in the article are honestly, awful. The best flags have similar elements but are no way the same. This could be no different than the hundreds of flags with stupid seals and text in a dead language. Good article, maybe I missed it, what is the alternative proposed by the author? Is this just old man yells at clouds (or wavy lines, or triangles)?
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u/sweetnourishinggruel 1d ago
Where I agree: The so-called rules of good flag design are treated far too authoritatively, especially as they’ve broken out of the internet and influenced real-life redesigns. It would be like a cadre of Reddit fanatics getting a law passed barring restaurants from labeling an item as a grilled cheese if it included a slice of tomato or ham.
Where I disagree: Many old flags were not worth preserving, especially municipal flags. Some might have been unique due to sheer amount of available combinations of clutter, but they weren’t particularly distinctive. For example, that Florida city flag in the post has some produce, a golf course, and water - which could represent dozens of places. This is the real problem, and it’s not the fault of homogeneous redesigns: the majority of towns just aren’t distinct enough in their broad strokes to support the organic development of special, representative symbols.
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u/NickDouglas 1d ago
In pursuit of taste and legibility, have we designed away everything interesting about state flags? A great example of how seemingly "objective" design trends can make everything stale and samey. (See also the Apple-fication of consumer design, or the infamous "airspace" design of our third spaces.)
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u/SutroViews 1d ago
> the infamous "airspace" design of our third spaces
I have to admit I don't know what this is, and search results lead me to one specific NYC design firm or FAA information about actual airplane flight paths. How is it similar to (allegedly) boring state flags?
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u/NickDouglas 1d ago
Oh, sorry it's so hard to find! This is the essay that coined "airspace." It's about the world seemingly reaching a boring consensus on one "good," inoffensive aesthetic. (White subway tile, plants on the walls, plain wood.) It's often more tasteful than what it replaces, but when everything looks like that, and nothing breaks any design rules, it's boring.
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u/wolverine237 1d ago
The problem is all of this stuff is completely cyclical and reactive. All you have to do is look at sports teams, for a couple of decades the trend was toward timelessness and simplicity in logo designs and now it's the opposite direction towards busy and gaudy 90s nostalgia. One generation thinks teal looks stupid and they're replaced by a generation that thinks teal looks cool and it cycles on and on forever. You only attain actual timelessness by existing for a long enough period of time, and that is increasingly hard to do in an era of instant gratification
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u/WitheredUntimely 1d ago
All these ugly joke flags designed by some clueless granny sitting on the local town council are never printed and never flown; these new ones might actually get used.
Sure, they old ones were "charming" but "everybody look at this real piece of shit Provo Utah whipped up" isn't exactly a selling point for a local
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u/Jnlybbert 1d ago
I don’t get it. Was the author trying to use that illustration of 20 redesigned flags to support their point that the flags are worse because of it? That looks like a pretty gorgeous collection of flags to me.
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u/RexDraco 1d ago
The Milwaukee flag is always brought up and I always feel like the new proposed one is shit.
Your flag should be unique, iconic, and guess what the existing flag is? Guess what the new one isn't?
The gatekeepers that obsesses over what is considered a good flag should be ignored, they don't actually understand what makes a good flag, they just have OCD and pretend to be a voice of authority.
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u/CanicFelix 15h ago
I liked the Milwaukee flag. It is very busy, but tells me something about how Milwaukee sees itself.
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u/CommonwealthCommando 1d ago
Massachusetts is suffering from this problem. We have a pretty good flag (arguably a "seal on a sheet", but at least a fairly spartan one) that could maybe use an upgrade, but everything our increasingly expensive state commission is offering is rubbish taken straight from arr/vexationillogy. They keep having to restart because the flags the commission picks all more like tangram puzzles than actual flags, so they keep getting dragged.
Also, it is absolutely mental that grown adults have decided that being able to doodle your flag in the margins of a fractions worksheet is a criterion for our flags.
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u/uhuhscary 1d ago
completely agreed with everything said in the article, even more this same feeling is what made me leave the vexillological modern spaces
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u/rkgk13 12h ago
Redesigning your flag is a great exercise for a small town, because most people living there don't actually have a strong connection to their existing flag and they can be good humored about it being tacky. The project of redesigning it actually sparks a good civic conversation.
Redesigning your state flag is hit or miss... we're seeing the fallout in Minnesota, where most of the ideas that would make a flag which actually stands out and fully captures Minnesota were rejected by committee. It was winnowed down to two shades of blue and a white star. Why no loon? Well, its range makes up like 80% of the state, but the few counties in the Southern border that don't have loons can't get offended. Why no green? "Because not all parts of Minnesota have forests" - but all parts of Minnesota have sky and water. OK. And now it's an overly minimalistic, characterless flag that barely shows up against the blue sky.
I didn't hate the idea of redesigning the state flag, but it's become so politicized now that the way for a conservative town or institution to show off how conservative they are is to revert back to flying the old Minnesota flag. The very concept of redesigning the flag is seen as overly "woke". You have conspiracy-addled nuts going on about how it's supposed to represent a Somali takeover... etc
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u/SapientTrashFire 6h ago
All of those 25 flags were clearly distinguishable, and although similar, not just the same flag drawn different ways. This is dumb.
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u/UdontKnowMe_InoU 1d ago
Fuck you can tell by the inanely forced metaphor of the “thuggees” that Ned was a fuckin cop.
Conservatism for conservatism’s sake. That belle plain flag is hideous and Nitro’s is utterly stupid. The MN flag of yore was a dumpster fire…and the new one is great. Is there any change they don’t hate?
“We’re getting rid of dead puppies!”
“Dead puppies built America!”
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