A TED Talk about vexillography

[Hendryk]

Roman Mars has some useful advice about flag design:

"A flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory."

 

[Thande]

Interestingly, that's the exact same criterion quoted in 1990s-era Star Trek when designing a ship or other setting for a series.

Of course the Union Jack fails this test considering the number of 19th century political cartoonists who drew it in a bewildering variety of wrong ways.

 

[Alex Richards]

"A flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory."

I actually kind of disagree with this one. There's a lot of good flags that fall foul of it- including both the UK and the US, and a lot of bad ones that don't (looking at you St. Lucia, Myanmar and the endless mess of generic West African tricolours).

EDIT: Also the flag of the Republic of Venice just breaks all the rules and it is awesome.

 

[Thande]

I actually kind of disagree with this one. There's a lot of good flags that fall foul of it- including both the UK and the US, and a lot of bad ones that don't (looking at you St. Lucia, Myanmar and the endless mess of generic West African tricolours).

EDIT: Also the flag of the Republic of Venice just breaks all the rules and it is awesome.

I think you can get a get out of jail free card if you have a flag that is complex but can be adequately represented as something simple a child could draw. In this case "winged lion on red with fantails".

 

[Redolegna]

generic West African tricolours

At least they're using different colours, mostly. Do you want to have a talk about northern South American countries or, shudder, all the Central American ones?

 

[Hendryk]

I actually kind of disagree with this one. There's a lot of good flags that fall foul of it- including both the UK and the US, and a lot of bad ones that don't (looking at you St. Lucia, Myanmar and the endless mess of generic West African tricolours).

Fair point. There's simple, and then there's just lazy. The challenge is to come up with something visually striking while avoiding overcomplication. If a flag is going to reference another flag, fine, but at least put a minimum of creativity into it.

On the other hand, the fact that so many OTL flags are just variations of each other makes the job of ATL vexillographers easier...

 

[I Saw A Red Sky]

The challenge is to come up with something visually striking while avoiding overcomplication.

 

[The Professor]

I've seen that Ted talk before.

I actually kind of disagree with this one. There's a lot of good flags that fall foul of it- including both the UK and the US, and a lot of bad ones that don't (looking at you St. Lucia, Myanmar and the endless mess of generic West African tricolours).

I think that statement is oversimplified itself.
A flag should be simple enough for a child [1] to draw that's recognisable as the flag in question. This fits the UK, US, and Venice flags.
The goal is an uncomplicated flag rather than a "simple" flag.

[1] or perhaps we should downgrade that to journalists?

 

[Dom]

At least they're using different colours, mostly. Do you want to have a talk about northern South American countries or, shudder, all the Central American ones?

Your friendly reminder that the Jamaican flag is the only one in the world without red, white or blue in it.