That’s a great site! Thanks for linking it.
I personally like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Casper Wyoming.
One can only ask: What the hell was Tampa smoking?
I like Salem’s, Fresno’s and Seattle’s flags.
My favorite–the good ol’ U.S. of A.
I’m also partial to Jamaica. The color combo is unusual and the Jamaicans always have really nifty yellow, green, and black outfits at the Olympics.
ETA: One that I don’t care for is South Africa. It looks like it was designed by a committee.
My God, those city flags pretty much all suck. I didn’t know cities had flags. Even cities in Texas. Perhaps because of the high suckage factor.
Kenya’s spears and shield design is pretty cool.
Wales’ red dragon motif is supposedly the oldest national flag still in use, and it’s tattooed on my left shoulder.
Mozambique either has the best or the worst flag ever, I can’t tell which. It looks like it was designed by a middle schooler with Photoshop. But it’s got a fucking AK-47 on it.
That being said I really like the British and United States Confederate flag.
I really like flags.
Most of my favorite flags have either three or four colors. Too many two-color flags are easily mistaken for one another; Indonesia, Monaco, Salzburg, Solothurn, Poland–work something out! Five or more usually looks too busy (Saint-Pierre et Miquelon).
Still, Chuvashia, Leinster, New Mexico, Quebec and the new Macedonia are distinctive and meaningful with only two colors each. British Columbia manages to make a mess with four.
I mostly despise flags with writing on them. If you have to put words on there, the design isn’t working! Kansas recognized that their 1927 flag, the old seal-on-a-blue-field thing, wasn’t working, but instead of coming up with a distinctive new design, they just added “KANSAS” in huge stupid letters. And then Wisconsin had to go and do the same thing to theirs! Those states need to just start over. California would be a great flag if they just dropped the words.
For the best U.S. state flag of all, gotta go with Maryland–bold heraldic design, utterly unmistakable, and with real historical meaning.
Some other excellent flags around the world are Jamaica, Kenya, Nepal, Wales.
I never noticed that with Mozambique.
A book, a hoe (i guess) and a machine gun with a bayonet. What national message is that sending?
:dubious:
The best kind.
Edit: And I believe the book is the Bible.
Not if the Attorney General of Virgina has his way: Sic Semper Boobies!
This is the greatest flag in the world.
The Flag of Ohio: The only state flag that’s not a rectangle.
And of course there’s this one.
This says “Don’t mess with us” rather directly: http://www.craphound.com/images/Flag_of_the_Benin_Empire.svg.jpg
I assumed it was a holy book of some kind. Nothing says religion like an AK-47!
Ok that really is a cool flag.
Took the joke right out of my mind.
Green is the color of Islam.
Other flags incorporating green specifically to represent Islam are Abkhazia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kashmir, Kuwait, Maldives, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somaliland, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tatarstan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
The other main signifier of Islam in flags is the star-and-crescent. There are only a few Muslim countries that have neither green nor the star-and-crescent; several have both.
Hereis a good guide to flag design from the North American Vexillological Association. Their five basic principles, which the site expands upon, are:
Many posters here have put forth similar views (especially spark240) or have expressed a preference for flags that observe these principles.
Note to TheChileanBlob: It was NAVA that rated the New Mexico flag as #1.
I remember a site by a vexillologist who added a few additional principles of his own, notably that flags should not include images of weapons. Surprisingly, this excludes quite a few flags, and not just Mozambique’s. There are a few other guns and many swords, clubs, arrows, etc., on flags out there. I think I agree with this idea in general, although I wouldn’t be overly dogmatic about it. I’m fine with banning AK-47s, but these days arrows are more symbolic than threatening.
Like spark240, I particularly like my home state’s flag, but I’ve always been partial to the simple elegance of New Mexico’s, as well.
The Vinnland Flag (in memory of Peter Steele from Type O Negative).
Flags I like:
Wales. It’s got a dragon on it. Dragons are cool.
Albania. Distinctive, attractive, good color scheme.
A lot of the Japanese prefecture flags are spiffy.
The Chicago flag. Which is so common in Chicago that I thought it was the Illinois state flag when I first moved there. (No, Illinois has one of those terrible “state seal” flags.)
Canada. Simple, attractive, no one ever gets it confused with any other flag. It reminds me of maple-flavored stuff (yum).
Nepal. Why does it have such a funky shape? I don’t know and I don’t care. It looks cool.
Sri Lanka. Undrawable (I know this from personal experience, having done a report on Sri Lanka in 6th grade) but lions with swords are always neat.
Macedonia. It’s spiffy. Naturally the Greeks hate it because it was Alexander the Great’s flag and Macedonia is in GREECE and you are all a bunch of cultural thieves. So it looks cool but Greece will keep vetoing your NATO application as long as you use it, just a heads up.
Flags I don’t like:
All of those European flags with three stripes of color. BORING.
All of the US state flags with a seal on them. UNCREATIVE.
And, I don’t CARE that it’s some kind of official heraldry, the Maryland state flag is an offense against the human eye. Every time someone mentions how hideous this flag is, Marylanders start whining about how it’s follows some kind of heraldry tradition and blah blah blah did I mention I don’t care? Your heraldry traditions mean nothing to me. It’s not only ugly, it’s actually physically painful to look at.
Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela: your flags are almost identical. Do something about it.
Australia and New Zealand: same thing.
Ukraine. Those two colors together just look ugly. Sorry.