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Welcome to the flag nerd thread or as flag nerds call it: the vexillology thread. People study flags?! Yeah, dog. There's even an organization devoted to studying them and a 99% invisible episode devoted to talking about it. They've developed 5 principles of good flag design: quote:
There are of course great flags that are beloved by its people which violate each of these rules. Any rule in art & design will always have a great counter-example because they're really more guidelines but if they violate more than 1 they're almost always irredeemable crap. And also even with the rules people just don't know how to design a halfway decent flag. The most commonly violated rule for Americans is 4 because most states and cities will just put the seal on a blue background and call it a day. That's a phenomenon so common that flag nerds actually have a term for it: SOB, Seal on a Bedsheet. I mean look at this poo poo.  Look at this.  Look at this! They need to tell you what state it is so you don't get confused!  LOOK! AT! THIS! Because of this loving crap state flags are one of the most common flags for amateur flag nerds to redesign. https://reddit.com/r/vexillology is a treasure trove for these redesigns. Some of them are good, many of them are complete trash and proof that following the rules does not a good flag make. I'll probably post some of these in the thread later. Anyway, discuss flags in this thread. Post good flags, bad flags, fictional flags, historical flags. Redesign some flags yourself! Post some drat flags!
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Jun 20, 2020 23:08
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 01:59 |
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In Memoriam This thread is dedicated to the memory of the two greatest flags of all time abandoned by their cowardly city councils who were scared of loving flag nerds for some boring by the numbers mediocrity.  Provo, Utah (1989-2015)  Pocatello, Idaho (2001-2017) The greatest flag of all time. The slogan, the intentional artifacting of the mountains, the copyright printed on the flag itself. Good things can never last. Murdered by Roman Mars and his flag nerd episode of 99% invisible. Keep these brave flags in your thoughts. Gone but not forgotten. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOhnrjdYOc
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Jun 20, 2020 23:15
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I've actually been going though Wikipedia looking at various flags lately and yeah, most US state and city flags are pretty bad. That said I think the flag of Phoenix, AZ is pretty neat (how many purple flags are there?)
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Jun 20, 2020 23:32
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The_Other posted:I've actually been going though Wikipedia looking at various flags lately and yeah, most US state and city flags are pretty bad. That said I think the flag of Phoenix, AZ is pretty neat (how many purple flags are there?) If you like that style, take a look at the Japanese prefectural flags. Very similar.
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Jun 20, 2020 23:52
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The_Other posted:I've actually been going though Wikipedia looking at various flags lately and yeah, most US state and city flags are pretty bad. That said I think the flag of Phoenix, AZ is pretty neat (how many purple flags are there?) I was just thinking about purple flags today, despite it being the color of kings, there are only two countries with purple on their flags at all. I happen to like both even though I think the vexheads will probably disagree because of The Rules. Nicaragua:  This one is a little SOB but I actually like the seal because it's unique. And Dominica:  I think the parrot is cute  a lot of the Caribbean flags are really good aesthetically in my opinion.I guess it's technically three if you count Qatar, which uses a similar color to that Phoenix flag
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Jun 21, 2020 00:04
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 Flag of Louisiana  Flag of the Governor of Alabama  Flag of Nevada (1905-1915)  Flag of the Seminole Tribe of Florida  Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy The flags of the US range from cool to wtf and that's not even getting into City and County flags.
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Jun 21, 2020 00:05
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QuickbreathFinisher posted:I was just thinking about purple flags today, despite it being the color of kings, there are only two countries with purple on their flags at all. I happen to like both even though I think the vexheads will probably disagree because of The Rules. Not a big fan of Nicaragua because seals don't belong on a flag, but Dominica is great. Non-European countries absolutely should show some liberty with the flag rules, and that flag is still perfectly able to be blazoned. That Iroquois flag though, ugh. How are you even going to describe that? "A pixelated buttplug horizontally connected to four squares"?
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Jun 21, 2020 00:10
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did u know that pro-slavery bushwhacker forces in the antebellum ks/mo border war used a star on a red background makes u think...
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Jun 21, 2020 00:12
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peak debt posted:That Iroquois flag though, ugh. How are you even going to describe that? "A pixelated buttplug horizontally connected to four squares"? The pixelation is from whoever uploaded it to Wikimedia  here's a less pixelated version and an explanation of the center symbol quote:The central symbol is a tree and represents the Onondaga Nation. It was in the Onondaga Nation that the Peacemaker planted the Tree of Peace and it was under that tree where the leaders of the Five Nations buried their weapons of war. The Hiawatha Belt forms the basis of the flag of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
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Jun 21, 2020 00:20
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Denver, CO
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Jun 21, 2020 01:28
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 The banner of the Republic of Sonora, as flown by President William Walker. Surprisingly it was never a real country and most of his men were killed or captured or just deserted, and were beate by a sonoran militia that was actually raised in Sonora and loyal to Mexico instead of the US. William Walker was eventually executed by Honduras after briefly becoming dictator of Nicaragua and invading Costa Rica. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 01:54
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Personally, I kinda like that state flags are awful. It discourages people from developing loyalty to their state rather than their country. It's also a little harder to develop unique symbols in the Americas because the old world is absolutely littered with old coats of arms or symbols for every square inch of land to adopt, while in the new world everything has to be a little ad-hoc. Maryland's flag is what you get when you try borrowing some old nobility's symbol. I guess it looks kind of okay.  I like it better in crab flavor.  You know what, just eat your flags. That's a better use of flags.
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Jun 21, 2020 03:03
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Ground floor, I get to post the coolest flag This is the sort of flag that had Russians moving to work in an irradiated Siberian nuclear plant, just so they could say they lived in the atomic bear city. Now, in the category of flags resembling something made by a 5-year-old in MS Paint, I present these Liberian county flags:  ^ This one's from Bong County, and it does look like they'd been hitting the bong a little too much   Bro those two trees don't even appear to be on the ground The_Other posted:I've actually been going though Wikipedia looking at various flags lately and yeah, most US state and city flags are pretty bad. That said I think the flag of Phoenix, AZ is pretty neat (how many purple flags are there?) This looks like a video game faction flag, but I like it. Definitely better than all the garbage blue flags in the rest of the US. Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 03:19
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The_Other posted:I've actually been going though Wikipedia looking at various flags lately and yeah, most US state and city flags are pretty bad. That said I think the flag of Phoenix, AZ is pretty neat (how many purple flags are there?)
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Jun 21, 2020 05:06
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Any Canadian flag that still uses the Red Ensign or the Union Jack sucks rear end, imo. You're not part of the empire any more, get over it. First Nations flags are really cool, especially the ones based in history like the Hiawatha Wampum Belt that the Haudenosaunee flag is based on.  I also like them because they sometimes piss off western vexillology dorks for not following the "proper" rules and conventions (set about by white European traditions).  Flag of NunatuKavut. It's got a fuckin' bloody ulu on there, which kicks rear end.  Flag of the Stoney Nakoda. Telling the white man to chill out with the genocide and just smoke a bowl with them.  Flag of Nunavut. It's got the things you rely on for navigation in the Arctic when your GPS dies ten minutes after turning it on in the cold.  Flag of the Tahltan Nation, representing the houses of the Crow clan and the Wolf clan.  Metis Nation flag. This land is and has always been ours, and we're gonna be here forever, bitches.  Flag of the Haida Nation. Of course Raven is gonna be on it, Raven kicks rear end. Raven, and I quote, "brought the first humans up out of the ground because he needed to fill up a party he was throwing".
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Jun 21, 2020 09:05
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 This is a flag for a potential breakaway nation comprised of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. I initially liked the colors of the bars representing clear blue sky and green fields, but then I realized the unintentional (or not?) implication of all white where the people would be. A good poster fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Feb 4, 2022 |
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Jun 21, 2020 12:46
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French region flags (which are not necessarily official) are generally based on the region's historical coat of arm. Here's Auvergne. It's not actually a dick, it's a gonfalon (specifically, the gonfalon of the Abbey of Aurillac). So it's kind of a flag of a flag.  Here's Savoie. Like the flag of their Swiss neighbors, it's a centered white cross on a red field, but the cross here extends to the border of the flag.  Here's Lyonnais. It's the land around the city of Lyon. And yes "Lyon" sounds just like "Lion", so the choice was obvious.  Here's Dauphiné. The Count of Vienne had a dolphin on his coat of arm for some reason, so he was nicknamed "the dolphin", so his land was referred to as the Dolphined Land. Later the Dauphiné became the land for the heir apparent of the King of France (kind of like Wales for the British), which is why the title for said heir apparent was Dauphin. Notice how the dolphin here has fish fins, because medieval heraldry did not know or care about accurate details of cetacean biology.  Nowadays all these areas and then some are merged into a single administrative region, so its flag is:  Historical flag of Brittany. Sometimes variants feature ermines, since they were on the coat of arms of the Duchy of Brittany.  Modern flag of Brittany. Like the modern Greek flag, you can see the influence of the US flag in its design.  Alsace. This combines the historical coat of arms of Upper and Lower Alsace.  Languedoc. The Occitan cross in gold on a red field. There's also a variant with a seven-pointed star in the upper-right corner.  Roussillon. Yeah it's just the Catalan flag.  Occitanie, being the Languedoc-Roussillon.  French Guiana. Kinda boring honestly.  Martinique, historical. Now that's a cool flag.  Martinique, modern. A shame to lose the snakes, IMO.  Réunion. A proposed flag, not actually official. The red triangle symbolizes Furnace Peak.  New Caledonia. This flag has there the same official status as the national French flag.  Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (TAAF). They managed to turn that clumsy acronym into a kinda cool logo.  Coxswain Balls posted:
Really cool design on this one.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:38
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Louisiana's parish flags have some extremely bad flags, the ones that exist at all are almost all just the seal of the parish on cloth, or worse, dogshit like this Ascension Parish, though, has a very busy, but still neat, one.  Like I said, busy, but it's actually kinda funny. It actually is a pretty new flag because the old one used to just have the parish seal on it, this  so a local kid who was a Flag Nerd petitioned for it to be changed and used parts of the seal to keep a link to the past. Not much of a complex flag, the plants on green represent the agriculture, the machinery represents the chemical industry, the three stars are common for Louisiana flags to match the state flag with the pelican bleeding three drops. So, still kinda Bad Flag, but it's an improvement, and it's cute it was a kid's project.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:51
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That's cool but I'm also disappointed in the rest of America's youth that they've taken no action to change their garbage flags I hate to say it but even the stars and stripes is barely passable
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Jun 21, 2020 13:53
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You can't post the Alsace flag without showing the extremely good original Alsace flags: Haute-Alsace  Basse-Alsace  Also the fleurdelisé is one of, if not the, the best european-style flags actually still in use:  No snakes but she's a looker. Only adopted in 1948, so way more modern than people think. Phlegmish posted:I hate to say it but even the stars and stripes is barely passable It's hideous and we all know it Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 13:57
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Nerds always hate the popular stuff. Flag nerds are no exception.
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Jun 21, 2020 14:47
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Coxswain Balls posted:
I particularly like this one, and the Haida one of course, for homer reasons I guess, but thanks for sharing all of them. Are the two vertical bands along the hoist a common motif in North American indigenous flags? I noticed it in the NunatuKavut one too. A good poster posted:
It's not in any way intentional for the Doug, but I think that is the intention behind the flag that actual northwest white nationalists use:  (spoilered for NSFW-ish nazi flags) For the Doug, the intention of the white band is to represent the cloudy skies and snowy mountain peaks. The Doug isn't really used by white supremacists, and instead mostly used by sports fans, or independent-minded people more driven by ecology than racial bigotry.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:29
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To make the new thread more confusing, have these: Cyprus  Kosovo  United Nations  
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Jun 21, 2020 16:37
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A good poster posted:
My biggest problem with this flag is that it has dark green on medium green.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:39
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Brittany's modern flag makes me panic for a moment before I notice there's no blue. I feel like flag nerds overvalue simplicity, which is why all the samey forgettable tricolors that are more glorified color swatches get a pass, but America's distinctive flag from before tricolors were invented always gets people's ire up. If you're gonna just have a few colored stripes, don't even bother reserving a neutral color to balance it out. Do like Ukraine does and just take the two symbolic colors you really care about for a more distinct bicolor.  Simple, unusual, eye-catching, and illustrative.  Of course, if you're talking about formerly soviet nations, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have some of the best flags out there for being eye-catching and still simple.   When I think of the simplicity needed for a flag, I think of being a kid and having to draw the flag fairly accurately, so America is like right on the edge of being able to do it, because it's hard to count right, although it's easy to get the gist of it across. The Mexican flag is a real example of a design just a bit too complex to consistently get just right, and if you look at their history, every few decades they tweaked the eagle with a snake on a cactus a bit.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:47
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like flag nerds overvalue simplicity, which is why all the samey forgettable tricolors that are more glorified color swatches get a pass, but America's distinctive flag from before tricolors were invented always gets people's ire up. Doesn't it have dozens of stars and ??? amount of stripes? That's stupid. You can absolutely make a good flag using stars and stripes, but the American one is not it. I give it a 6/10, I'm docking half a point because a country with such a generic name could really use a flag that makes them stand out more (in a positive sense).
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Jun 21, 2020 16:57
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The Guilford Courthouse flag is a fun example of "someone described the Stars and Stripes to me while I was kinda distracted":
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Jun 21, 2020 17:02
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Amsterdam:  It's interesting because its origins are murky. The 3 X's are not an XXX for the red light district, it's probably three st. andrews crosses. In sign language, the gesture for Amsterdam is making three crosses with your arms. I was told there that the three crosses stood for the bridges across the Amstel, which supposedly is another origin story.
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Jun 21, 2020 17:15
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Tuxedo Gin posted:If you like that style, take a look at the Japanese prefectural flags. Very similar. There are also a huge number of municipal flags in the same vein. Collectively, they're a great argument against rule #4 as written, as almost all are either 1-3 stylized glyphs from the name (thus establishing meaning) or a local traditional seal. The hypothetical weakness is that the style needs to be painted or precision-cut in the absence of modern printing, rather than bedsheeted together. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 17:25
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Phlegmish posted:I give it a 6/10, I'm docking half a point because a country with such a generic name could really use a flag that makes them stand out more (in a positive sense). It followed in the footsteps of the United Kingdom and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and would later be followed by the vast bulk of countries as they became modern states, all adopting an official name that describe themselves as just government type of more commonly accepted region name, like the Republic of Korea, People's Democratic Republic of Korea, People's Republic of China, United Mexican States, or Federal Republic of Germany. Some countries choose to just have go adjective government type like the French Republic (Mk V) or the Russian Federation. Of course, America has issues falling back on its region name like most other countries do, because all of the other countries in the Americas get grumpy about it, but it made sense at the time when there was only one independent group of Europeans in the New World.
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Jun 21, 2020 17:38
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Ooooh a flag thread! Can I post my takes on certain flags?
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Jun 21, 2020 17:45
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I'm actually a fan of the Stars and Stripes, its certianly better than the innumerable interchangeable tricolors of Europe but Phlegmish inspired me to do a quick and dirty redesign of the US flag to make it more attractive and adhere to the principles of good flag design and see how it looks, I was pretty happy with the result:
BIG FLUFFY DOG fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 17:47
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Lord Stimperor posted:Amsterdam: Des Moines, Iowa:  Also three bridges across the river.
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Jun 21, 2020 17:47
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Is there anything bad about the Tennessee tri-star?
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Jun 21, 2020 17:53
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Grouchio posted:Ooooh a flag thread! Can I post my takes on certain flags? No, debate and discussion of flags in the flag thread of the debate and discussion forum is forbidden.
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Jun 21, 2020 17:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:It followed in the footsteps of the United Kingdom and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and would later be followed by the vast bulk of countries as they became modern states, all adopting an official name that describe themselves as just government type of more commonly accepted region name, like the Republic of Korea, People's Democratic Republic of Korea, People's Republic of China, United Mexican States, or Federal Republic of Germany. Some countries choose to just have go adjective government type like the French Republic (Mk V) or the Russian Federation. This post really only makes sense if you assume all countries name themselves in english. SlothfulCobra posted:Brittany's modern flag makes me panic for a moment before I notice there's no blue. I have talked to my ukrainian friend about this and traded lots of photos, and we decided that steppe and prairie are the same thing and that ukrainian flag is inspired as gently caress compared to TX or even New Mexico   That's Texas and Ukraine, which is which motherfuckers Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 17:59
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:I'm actually a fan of the Stars and Stripes, its certianly better than the innumerable interchangeable tricolors of Europe but Phlegmish inspired me to do a quick and dirty redesign of the US flag to make it more attractive and adhere to the principles of good flag design and see how it looks, I was pretty happy with the result: The Comic Sans is a nice touch but it's still a bit too aesthetically pleasing. Try adding a few unnecessary quadrants, put one or more other flags on it, the neutral blue is a bit boring, and don't forget to add a copyright or trademark symbol next to the text.
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Jun 21, 2020 18:03
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JesustheDarkLord posted:Is there anything bad about the Tennessee tri-star?
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Jun 21, 2020 18:07
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It looks like a Pokémon flag but that's not really their fault, I'm sure the flag was first
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Jun 21, 2020 18:08
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I'm not much for flag design per se, but from a general visual design perspective the TN flag seems perfectly decent. It's got a little extra flourish on the side and it might be a little difficult to draw from memory perfectly accurately, but that's fine, it's very distinctive and highly visible without being overloaded with cruft. Its greatest crime is being associated with stans of Tennessee.
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Jun 21, 2020 18:54
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