Well “It’s we suddenly got “southern pride” in the 1950s when them judges tried to keep us from keepin’ the niggers down.” See Georgia (1956)
Mississippi is more “the South shall rise again!” adopting it in 1894
Abe, or perhaps Andrew Johnson should have had the confederate generals, colonels, and politicians shot. Too bad we didn’t have de-confederization, back then.
Related: The world’s flags given letter grades.
As discussed above (“gas station brands”), all of these would get poor grades on the grounds of looking like a corporate logo.
I’m from Tennessee and I don’t think there’s any confederate symbolism in the flag. The 3 stars are for the 3 divisions of Tennessee (east, middle, west). Maybe I’m naive, but I never thought there was any desire to evoke the Confederate flag.
As already noted, changing Washington state’s flag to any color but green is just… ugh. And an eagle, of all things? If I was doing it, I’d ditch the seal, though keep an outline of ol’ George, and try to work in a salmon and/or apple.
I don’t like the current flag of my state (Vermont, one of the seal-on-blue-background flags), but we already have a perfectly good alternative in the form of the Vermont Republic flag.
He claims to have “updated” this for his new one, but I really don’t see it…
Oh god… seizure…
I’m not sure I understand that. Most New England flags are pretty lame, even when compared to these.
The title of the linked website is literally: “#sideproject: United We Stand” so it’s even more slacktovision that you had imagined. Not even a side project, but a HASHTAGsideproject
This entire project just ends up looking like a “new product rollout”, like when they redesigned the Pepsi logo. Take the colors for example: does making the blue brighter really appeal to you more, or just “look different”?
I like the general idea (in fact I wanted to like the flags too), and some of the new flags are definite improvements, but I doubt having new flags will really foster unity-- it’s not like most folks even know what their state flag looks like, and making them all equally bland doesn’t help either.
The current design for Nevada is pretty bland- the seal itself is actually rather nice, though the placement and blue field is less than inspiring. However, this new version is tragically, incomprehensibly boring. And ugly. Definitely the worst of this pretty terrible bunch.
Not that every state flag is that great… but this guy took 50 unique flags that in most cases had an intimate relationship with its state’s history and character, and turned it into blasé schlock. While in some cases he makes a point as to why he used a star or a stripe, that symbolism is completely lost in most cases. You would have to actively point out the symbolism, as it is not inherently obvious. Most of them you could exchange one for another and it would make just as much “sense”.
I’m one of those old fogies that gets all grumpy about newspaper layout changes and other trivial alterations to my comfort zone.
I’m trying hard to look at this without that kind of conservative, reactionary sort of response.
At this point, I wonder what the purpose of a State Flag (or City Flag) is. My city (Ann Arbor) has a City Flag - I think. I couldn’t tell you what it looks like from memory though.
Frankly, I can’t come up with a justifying reason for a State Flag - so I can’t justify putting any effort into making a change.
An amusing exercise. But the web site sucks sharp, pointy rocks. I had to let my browser expand to take over my entire screen - which (by my standards) is infantile web design (and sadly, very modern tablet/smartphone afflicted.) The darn flags look like tiles.
As a while, they’re suitable for alphabet blocks for small children.
And the fact that the Illinois River really isn’t a major deal in the state (the stated reason for the one blue stripe). Maybe he meant the Mississippi? But even then…no one knows the state motto, and it’s not interesting (or unique enough) to draw attention to with the two thin red stripes.
We can all come together in unity at our extreme dislike of these “improvements” to our state flags.
Both the flag of Tennessee and the Confederate battle flag have a red field with a blue device in the middle that features white stars and a white border. Coincidence? Unlikely.
It’s kinda funny. When I first looked at the preview collection of new flags (where for some goofy reason they’re cropped into squares, making them all look incomplete like puzzle pieces), it made me think that “Could These… Bring America Together?” meant that the new flags actually were designed to be puzzle pieces, and if you reassembled them in the proper order, you’d get a larger image with a bigger message that actually, in effect, would result in a new and more-relevant national flag.
That right there was a missed opportunity, if one wanted to bother with the overall exercise in the first place. As it is, the “collection” flag at the top of the article, with Old Glory (sorry… I mean Episode IV: A New Hope) as the canton, just looks like… I dunno, star-spangled chaos.
Never mind the three-color palette, the overreliance on stars and simple geometric shapes, and the adherence to… uh… Vexillological Rules. All those do is make these flags as distinctive and unique as the floor level markers in the Warner Bros parking garage. (I’m parked on Sylvester today, though I was on Roadrunner yesterday. Maybe someday I’ll get promoted to Daffy privileges.)
If I were bothering to do this (and I wouldn’t), not only would I strive to evoke each state’s essence in its flag, but to make those flags fit together in a fashion that exemplifies and evokes the Union, and how each state needs and relies upon and works with all the rest. They’re all puzzle pieces after all, each with its own strengths and attributes, but together forming a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Which isn’t strictly true in the reality-based world where I live, where pledging allegiance to a flag is nothing more than school-sponsored jingoistic idolatry aimed at a scrap of Chinese-sourced polyester-blend fabric, but if you’re talking about heraldry and flags in the first place, you gotta use that inspiring Lincolnesque horseshit in your press releases.
P.S. The new North Dakota looks like a very hungry Cyclops is coming to get you.
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