As a marylander, the proper way to display our flag is in the form of a set of overalls and a garish red white black and gold top hat worn while attending a ravens game
@@dontworry1302 It's an option as long as you drench your food in Old Bay, wear a Steven Universe shirt, and have a deck of Fluxx cards in your pocket. Oh, and of course you gotta end the day by playing Just One More Turn of Sid Meier's Civilization.
As a former Portuguese child, I can attest that no one can draw the flag from memory. The simplest version is a green and red flag with a yellow circle. The more advanced version is with the coat of arms inside the yellow circle, like halo. Full marks if you can draw the 7 castles and the 5 "quinas" in detail. But no one can draw the armillary sphere in detail, hence the yellow circle/halo.
That's also a good point against the blue seal state flags. The portuguese flag has a lot of details but it is easily simplified to two colors and a circle and applied to other media like emoji, pins, accessories. You can't do that to the state flags because they're not distinctive enough - which could be improved by for instance having a unique background color.
Totally agree. Brunei and Portugal have a distinctive simple flag with some meaningful stuff put on top. Many state flags only have the top layer and are kinda missing a good AVA-approved design underneath, for small stuff.
Indonesia have a good shield with the five symbols of their constitution they could add, while the coat of arms of Monaco appears to be a game of chess that is about to get out of hand.
@@DanielHarveyDyer Knowing how the Indonesian public are not really into vexillology, and that they regard their flag highly and seriously, I don't think they would tolerate a flag change. I'm from there so I could attest to that.
Right? I see it regularly as a bumper sticker and I guarantee most people don’t even know it has something to do with Carolina. People just like the way it looks
@@chandlerblachut3878 here you are describing the issue. You say no one recognizes this as Carolina. So how it is a good flag then for representing Carolina?
@@Bazzzzzinga you wouldn't recognise the nordic flags as nordic if you never cared to learn it. but you did because it's ubiquitous knowledge. south carolina isnt as ubiquitous in culture
@@maisatanel I would not recognize anything in the world if I had not learned what it is. This is a non sequitur. The question is how easily the design lends itself to being recognized and connected to what it is that it is representing. Not if I had to learn it or not. I take your point on the ubiquitousness of culture being the driver for recognizability here. I do not think that the SC flag is bad, actually. But it somehow does not seem to speak to a lot of people as being South Carolina, and that is not great for a flag that is supposed to represent SC either.
It's true that the Union soldiers set out to defeat the traitorous Slave Power, but that didn't make them abolitionists. That certainly didn't make them in favor of civil rights. They hated the political and economic power accrued to the masters, and their conspiracy to destroy the Union. The North had sundown towns and redlining too.
Just because something has history, doesn't make it good. The Red Wings made major history at the Joe Louis Arena. It was still objectively a terrible and unsafe structure.
Something I’m realizing is how much I appreciate you adding photo and video of these flags waving and in use. I found it much easier to appreciate the more ‘complicated’ flags when I wasn’t staring closely at a sterile PNG.
I’m realizing that the minimalist flag-redesign punditry I’ve been just swallowing for a long time is an offshoot of the .jpg era when simple flags could be recreated better by chronically online netizens without going through the effort of contacting any historical societies and therefore the “simple is better” argument is actually just borne of laziness
"They do shading, because it's art." I think that captures something important about this debate. Some see flags as *art* while others see them as *design*. All of these guidelines - few colors, minimal fine detail, etc. - come from the language of graphic and product design. But if you see flags more as art that represents the state, then it suddenly doesn't make sense to treat design rules as paramount.
@@restroomuser graphic design is about so much more than marketing or selling. The drawing tip is very stupid but it is a huge plus for a flag to be easily memorable.
Funny: When you removed the rugs from the Turkmenistani flag, I would've confused it with Pakistan - especially some of the older designs that had a boatload of stars. So much for "distinctiveness" ...
Idaho and Montana are more similar than Pakistan and that modified Turkmenistan flags. If you agree with him on his other points, e.g. the seal on blue being discernible, you also ought to agree Kaye's modified Turkmenistan flag is not similar to Pakistan.
@@philip2205 Perhaps, but there are other considerations besides distinctiveness, which is what is being argued here. My point was that - assuming the person who wants to change a flag bears the burden of proof - removing the rugs from Turkmenistan's flag needlessly reduces its distinctiveness when compared with Pakistan's (where the only features are green, crescent, star/stars). Distinctiveness is among their listed virtues, so changing Turkmenistan's flag runs contrary to their position. As it stands now, I'd never mistake one for the other. It wasn't meant to be a final word, just another jab at the pamphlet's absurdities. But I don't have skin in this particular game and I am certainly no flag expert; my confusing the two flags would be akin to a child mangling the Stars and Stripes.
@@philip2205except Idaho and Montana *are* quite distinguishable. The seals are fairly different if you look at the details and they both have their names on the flag (Montana’s quite prominently). I’m not trying to strongly defend these flags, they could be better, but if you’re talking about being able to distinguish them they are absolutely distinguishable. Now, you might say: “I meant from a distance!” And I would understand that objection, but if you limit your design language to a limited color palette, limited number of colors and nothing complicated or letters then you’re going to run out of distinctive and *meaningful* flags if you’re trying to cover every Country, State, County, Province, City, etc. And remember: once you get to the level of states and cities (and other things like counties), you’re talking about probably thousands and certainly hundreds of flags to keep straight. Even if we’re just worried about just the 197 (ish) countries of the world that’s a lot to keep track of and it’s only made harder by strict adherence to these principles. I do think there is some usefulness to considering these principles when designing a flag, but I think they are only useful as loose guidelines *and* once you get below the country there’s need to be even looser with those rules.
Isn't the row of traditional designs a "stunning visual element," too? I'm a quilter and I absolutely love seeing fibercraft and traditional art on display as part of a flag! It's really unique!!
I just want to point out that the flag of Monaco is based on the heraldic colors of the House of Grimaldi. This has been their symbol since 1339, so if you're going to be consistent, Monaco still "deserves" the colors. But who cares? Who is going to confuse Monaco and Indonesia in any meaningful way? They're not neighbors, and that alone eliminates most of the chance of confusion. I say don't change it for the sake of practicality.
It's not so much an argument for Indonesia changing their flag as it should have been an argument raised when choosing their flag in 1945. "Monaco already has this design, and Poland has a similar design flipped upside down, so let's make some simple changes so our flag stands out from the crowd." And that's why it's in the flag design guidelines, to avoid ending up with flags that are too similar. While Indonesia is unlikely to have border crossings of people who thought they were entering Monaco, the modern world has a slew of international gatherings, organizations, conferences and more where you have flags from all over the world flying side by side. Not to mention embassies and consulates that often have a big flag outside as a primary identifier.
@@magneryset2357I get that, but it doesn't really defeat the rebuttal of "why did Indonesia have to wait until 1945 to choose their flag?" It would be incredibly insensitive and insulting to have told Indonesia, sorry buddy I know we colonized you for hundreds of years and all but you can't have the flag design that means very much to you because this tiny microstate that you probably have never heard of already picked that design. Also the concept of our modern international world was just not really a thing in 1945 and Indonesia probably had no reason to expect that it would be. So the idea of not being able to choose a flag because someone else already picked it probably just didn't occur to them.
Well Haiti and Liechtenstein did really change their flags in order to make them appear different. It all started when athletes from those two countries meet in the Olympics and found out that their countries flags are the same.
Yes but its fair to point out the Indonesian flag is based on the colors of the Majapahit Empire which was founded in 1293, so their use is still older. But you are still absolutely right that no-one sane is going to confuse the microstate Monaco with Indonesia. And even if they did, what would be the big deal? "Is that Monaco?" "No. That's Indonesia." "Oh." Totally worth changing the flag over.
I haven't noticed before but the effort you've put into the subtitles is seriously impressive, your using parenthesis and everything over here. Its a small thing but it really shows how much thought you put into these videos.
I have to say the snark of this video is so cathartic after YEARS of listening to “Vexillologists” snark about how “objectively” bad flag designs are based on metrics such as “I don’t like it.”
Someone can be snarky and annoying, and also be right. A flag can have history and importance, and also be an eye sore. These concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Flags don't have to follow any set of "rules", but we all know what a bad flag looks like.
@@ThatGuyMN This. The argument that they were used as battle standards kinda fails when you consider that they could have had a battle standard of a turd emoji. That doesn't mean a turd emoji would be a good state flag. Or it kinda would, because it would be more unique and identifiable than most of the US state flags. But it would still be a bad flag. If they used better battle standards in the ACW I would be in full support of keeping them as current state flags. But let history be history when it performs objectively poorly as a flag. Now discuss which state would 'deserve' to have the turd emoji as a state flag.
@kyle857 The fact that everyone is arguing over what good flag design is is pretty good evidence that there is NOT a good metric for what makes a good flag.
It's truly amazing how every single "movement" or policy advocacy picked up by Reddit becomes an absolute cesspit. Some sensible, reasonable positions turn into a nightmare of regurgitated points that lose all their meaning after a few rounds of Redditors playing the telephone game by copy pasting arguments they read in a previous thread. It's like a Midas touch that turns everything into cancer. They also have this tendency to make even the most trivial of debates a moral crusade. If I wanted to completely discredit something I don't like, making it popular on Reddit is basically the best way to do it at this point.
I wasn't aware of the history of many of these flags. It's easy to laugh at a bunch of similar "seal on blue" designs. It's all but impossible to hate a Union battle flag.
Native South Carolinian here, thank you SO MUCH for covering the South Carolina flag. I like CGP Grey but could not believe how dirty he did our flag. Everyone in South Carolina knows the history of the palmetto trees and their significance in the Revolutionary War. Growing up, we all learned about Fort Moultrie and how cannonballs bounced off the spongy palmetto trunks, bringing about a pivotal victory in the war. This story and the history of the palmetto tree are big points of state pride, and ones that we can continue to be proud of today. So much of SC's history is tainted with hateful un-Americanism, but our state flag stands for the most fundamental American value of all: liberty. Certainly better than D-tier! And I admit that I'm a little bit biased here, but the South Carolina flag just looks awesome. It's elegant without being ostentatious, and sophisticated without being abstract. The core imagery, independent of the historical significance, is about as South Carolina as it gets. With my own two eyes I have seen the crescent moon suspended above a Palmetto tree against a sea of blue. I smell the ocean breeze every time I see the flag. Some other thoughts: Angel Oak is a terrible suggestion for the state flag. Don't get me wrong: it's an incredible specimen and truly a sight to behold. I have visited many times and sat upon its branches, and I am (very) distantly related to the Angel family for which the tree is named. But it is unequivocally not something that represents the spirit of South Carolina. And that concept design was horrendous! I also grew up calling palmetto trees "palms" so that comment also made me groan. I think I'd heard the Jasper story at one point in my youth, but it has long since left my memory, so thank you for bringing that back. I'll remember the namesake of Jasper County the next time I drive through.
When I was in school they told us that Illinois' flag has the state's name on it because of a request from a soldier who was embarrassed that no one from other states recognized it. Don't know if it's true, but there is at least an apocryphal history behind its inclusion!
This flag snobbery really seems like: "Hey, let's redesign flags based on all those principles we learned from marketing" A flag isn't a corporate logo...
An example of this done wrong is Ottawa’s flag. They went from an admittedly not great purple-red-blue tricolour, to that plus the city coat of arms in 1987, to a blue and teal flag with a swirly O in the middle that looks like the logo of some middling tech company. And man is that last flag ugly
I am starting to think that the "manufacturing costs" argument comes more from a designer's perspective than anything else. Imagine you are a graphic designer and have to reconstruct the Virginia flag for a new digital medium (pixel art, emoji, VR...). In that case, the designer will actually take significantly more time and resources to reproduce all the details and intricacies in a manner that maintains fidelity to the original. So, not so much printing costs, but rather designing costs.
I'm not sure if this is as much of an issue now with AI assisting design so much? I have a Canva account for designing things for fun (print t-shirts , make mugs, memes, etc) and in the last few years it's just gotten easier and easier to look like I'm a really good graphic designer because of how smart the tech is. One click and it changes my design for multiple formats.
@@raa836 tell this to someone wanting to make handmade quilts/knit pouches/other art to show state pride! even as technology progresses (flag printing or AI designing) I would argue older methods of making and honoring with human made art are still incredibly beautiful and valuable.
Great! I wanted to make the exact same point, that ‘cost’ isn’t simply a matter of embroidery or stitching. Many flags are used absolutely _everywhere_ , including icons, silk-screened applications, engravings, and so much more. An elegant, solid design lends itself so much better to most applications than an overwrought mess!
I suspect the whole "manufacturing costs" argument is just meant to add a patina of practicality to a manifesto that, at the core, is mostly concerned with aesthetics.
What people get wrong about the "A child should be able to draw the flag from memory" is not that a child should be able to draw it perfectly. Rather a child should be able to draw a represenation of the flag where it could be recogised as said flag! Your use of the USA flag is a perfect example.
The US flag is in a way an exception to the rule. It's more 'detailed' than most national flags, but because it's a repeating pattern it still works quite well. You can describe it well with just a few sentences.
This is similar to something I heard from college friends in arts programs. There is a push away from artistry and towards graphic design. Obviously part of that is employability, but it uses similar rhetoric that everything you do has to have “your brand”, and your brand has to be simple and easily reproducible. I think it will be seen as the mark of our time that everything had to give way to mass production and reproducibility.
@@kurkenfruit I think it's more about memorability. It's hard to relate to a flag that I don't remember half the details on. The pamphlet gives very bad reasons for simplicity but there many good ones.
@@j-maffethe idea that it's impossible to relate to something that's too intricate and detailed is insane and runs counter to the very concept of art. imagine going to the Louvre and looking at the wall-sized masterpieces of artistic expression that are absolutely full of emotion and passion and deciding it's not as "relatable" as a fucking colored plus sign
The CGP Grey/Ted Kaye type flag reformers seem to want the flag to be essentially the "corporate logo" of a state/country - somethat that is basic and can be easily reproduced by a computer in varying resolutions and levels of detail. Ted Kaye even says that it should look recognizable in greyscale! When would a flag ever need to be in greyscale?
Largely true. However, the cultural shift is a little broader than just the movement towards design (and away from "artistry" ... By which I think you mean craft.) The modernist movement(s) is not really centered on design per se. It's driven by rationalism in many cultural domains and arts, abstraction in the arts, transcultural legibility in design, and branding in graphic and industrial design. The beginnings of these shifts can be located in the industrial revolution and several waves of cultural responses to it. The cultural history is fairly rich and has been thoroughly mapped out by art historians and other cultural historians. It's not really design per se. It's modernism, broadly... Including modernist design principles.
@@mongoose376When I was in military some of us used patches of our flag in greenscale instead of the original colors, because the gold and the red can be spotted in nature and give away positions (for real). And there's merit to wanting to have your patch be identifiable on a battlefield, in case you get wounded or unexpectedly end up in the line of sight of friendly troops for whatever reason.
The "Any child should be able to draw this from memory" brings my Canadian heart pain. It's a fairly simple design yet I do not know a single adult Canadian who can draw a proper maple leaf
Not done watching the video, but I never knew about the seal-on-blue flags having origins from the ACW. I think it's unlikely, but I hope CGP Grey makes a future flag video where he addresses some of the criticisms he's faced between this video and some other ones. Most of the people I've talked to in my life who know what vexillology is learned about it from CGP Grey (the rest from that TED talk,) so I hope he uses his platform for good.
Honestly, knowing Grey, he will not care at all. He's very much future minded about everything and won't care about "old and outdated" civil war flag designs.
@@TheDecimater1000 I can see where the sentiment comes from, but I do (imo) think he's capable and self-aware enough to step down, and discuss Premodernist's points perhaps not on a featured video, on his podcast maybe, but still probable
@@antiusername10 Then again, he also copyright striked Vlogging Through History's video on reacting to his Flag Tier List as a first resort. And then copyright striked another video after Vlogging Through History appealed the first copystrike. That whole event was a whole drama in it of itself. (FYI if your channel gets 3 copyright strikes it's gone).
just because the flags origin is the ACW doesn't just make it a good flag. that's nice that's the history but they are still terrible flags that don't represent the states. all they represent at that point is the civil war
I've been roasted online for so long for disagreeing with CGP's takes on flags. I hate the corporate logo-ification of these flags. This video is so gratifying to me.
It's so weird how we collectively as a society hated on corporate logo simplification but took those same principles and heralded them as the essence of good flag making. As if it's not all subjective anyways.
Ted Kaye's guidelines remind me of some of the more opinionated graphic designers I've worked with. Those designers insisted, bizarrely, that their design was *correct.* Not just useful, appropriate, or attractive--they insisted it was the *correct* design, and any deviation from it was wrong.
I'm seeing strong arguments backed up with evidence here, but the other guy presents everything in a snarky tone and speaks with absolute finality on the subject. I'm feeling at a loss here on who to side with.
AND he’s a little animated guy, which gives him a lot more credibility. Meanwhile premodernist is just presenting facts and evidence to slowly dismantle his opponents argument. idk bro tough choice I think the little animated guy is cooler make flags exclusively to appeal to babies
CGP Grey is speaking purely aesthetically, while premodernist is talking about historical symbolism. Neither is wrong, the weight you give to each is subjective and your choice to make.
I love learning from real people who are calm, collected, friendly and professional instead of learning from PNG characters who act zany and crazy and mock everything. Thank you for your work sir.
Same, it's very refreshing to watch something that feels like the times in college the professor went off script and just talked about stuff that interested him.
Tbh CGP Grey is a good person, and informative, but he does definitely skew cringy redditor, which turns many people off. I've been watching him for years so I know his weird takes, and I just shrug them off, but the flags one has always been his worst by far. I actually would recommend his videos to almost anyone interested in learning, just take his videos with a grain of salt, he's much more stem than humanities, which naturally puts him at odds with the average Premodernist viewer, I, being both stem and humanities, hate myself.
@@realkekz Good person and informative? Take off your "he made a few videos I like" blinders and you can see he's a dime-a-dozen "technology will save us all!!!!" techbro who'd sooner stamp out heart and creativity if it would make him money at the push of a button. If his unabashed worship of Apartheid Clyde or liberal use of AI art didn't clue you in to his real personality then nothing will.
As an Illinoisian, I think a lot of the impetus to change our flag here comes from Chicago having such an iconic and omnipresent flag. People want something like that but for the whole state. The seal is brilliant, but it just doesn’t hit the same way as the Chicago city flag or the Cook County flag.
I really think the modern trend comes down to having something distinctive. Look at how Marylanders or Coloradoans plaster their flag on everything. You’re not gonna get that in Nebraska.
What drives me crazy are the people from all over the Greater Chicagoland area using our flags as if! They probably don't even save winter parking spots with old lawn chairs or anything. Side note. I have the city flag tattooed my back. Ha
If what they're after is something like what Chicago has but for the whole state, then they should go with the Illinois Centennial flag. Same designer.
My hunch is that some people dislike the state flags not because they fail to follow some putative rules of simplicity but simply because they look rather crude in execution. There were no graphic designers and few trained artists of any description in the nascent states and the designs of the flags unsurprisingly do not look very polished to modern eyes. Some were probably hashed out by a local tailor or seamstress charged with implementing in cloth a concept expressed verbally by the local grandees.
Which is part of why they're such a tragedy. There was already a well established flag tradition available for them to draw on when designing their flags. One that produces easily distinguishable, identifiable and reproducible flags with meaning behind them.
People can be so weird online about flag stuff… good design isn’t something that can be assessed objectively with “rules”, but thousands of redditors have convinced themselves otherwise when it comes to flags and will yell at you about it.
Redditors do this a lot where they learn some surface level fact or factoid and come to believe they have unlocked some universal truth and all the world must be rearranged accordingly.
Rule #4 is silly because it says "never use writing of any kind" but the author clearly never considered the possibility of writing being used artistically or typographically, or that the text itself is an element of style. Very famously, Saudi Arabia uses lettering on its flag and I fail to understand how that detracts from its usage. The text being removed would not improve the quality of the flag. And then in the "other considerations" section, it says that the C is okay in the Colorado flag as a "strong graphic element." So they're aware of typography on flags, but didn't consider how that serves as an antidote to rule 4.
@@4quall haha, no worries! I didn't take it that way at all, promise. I sometimes mix up words that start with the same letter, so the correction is appreciated
An upper class American dude saying that an underdeveloped nation's flag would be better if they got rid of their traditional design, is some hardcore vexilogical colonialist thought
Or maybe he just doesn't think it looks cool ? It's fine if the people that are represented by the flag are okay with the design and it's also okay to be critical about a design because at the end of the day, what makes a design good is subjective.
@@titaninsane Well he's saying explicitly in his pamphlet that it's bad flag design. Like was mentioned in the video, he ignores his own rules about historical and cultural significance of symbols
@@louisjov The pamphlet is critical about the Navajo flag based on its aesthetic values, not it's cultural significance. At a first glance it is not an impressive or attractive flag by any measure. True, by learning more about what the flag represents, you can gain a better appreciation for it but it still doesn't make it an attractive flag to me personally. Obviously attractiveness is subjective and the Navajo are perfectly within their rights to determine that the symbolism is much more important than the way in which it is presented. Other people looking at the flag are also within their rights to not be impressed by it. You can view that as cultural chauvinism or the right to have an opinion.
I realized a few years ago that CGP Grey is the sort of person to read a single wikipedia article and then spin an entire, 100% confident, worldview around it.
Can't wait to watch this video. I'm a firm supporter of your channel, having graduated from undergrad as a history major, and I wrote my thesis on the confederacy's relationship to slavery. Keep on truckin!
The Indonesian flag is actually major example of the version of simplicity being good for flag design that I'd heard/knew- that it can be improvised in a revolutionary/resistance situation. Since during Indonesia's independence struggle there were pro-independence demonstrations where they made the flag by tearing apart the Dutch flag.
51:43 For the Indiana flag, I learned at some point in Indiana public schools, that the name on the flag isn’t necessarily to identify the flag, it’s to identify the largest star that it’s written above. The flag is 13 stars around the outside for the original colonies, 5 stars along the bottom for the 5 states that joined before Indiana, and then the largest star just above the torch represents the State. Perhaps the legislators wanted to make that symbolism clear.
Thanks for correcting CPG Grey - especially on the SC flag. I recognize that SC has a lot of problematic history, but this flag is one of the most recognizable flags in the Union and a vast majority of South Carolinians are proud to fly this flag unlike others that received a poor grade in his video.
Be careful using clips of CGPGrey’s stuff. I love his content but he can be very aggressive with copywrite strikes when people use clips of his content without requesting (and receiving) permission. Id argue this video specifically is very far from normal run on the mill “react” content, but just a heads up if you weren’t aware.
I opened this video with my arms crossed, thinking I’d disagree. But I’m glad to say I’ve changed my mind about flag redesign. Fantastic video once again!
I think some of the modernist criticisms are valid regardless of how poorly informed some of their online advocates have been. A flag probably should be recognizable at moderate distance, for example. Seals and heraldry are primarily designed for recognition at relatively close distances by contrast. But I'll give the rest of the video a complete listen and see if the historical argument leads me to abandon that modern design principle.
The history of the Indonesian flag is actually REALLY interesting to study, and its origin could have potentially affected many modern flags, including the US flag. The Indonesian flag has origins in the 14th century Majapahit Empire royal colors and flag, which was a red and white stripe flag. When the British East India company came into power in that region, they adopted that striped flag with a canton of the flag of England in the upper left corner in 1600. When England became the UK, they put the UK flag as the canton instead. Theres no exact record for this next part, but the story goes that the US founding fathers saw the freedom and impunity that the crown granted the East India company, and to evoke that freedom of trade, they adopted the Continental Union flag, which then naturally evolved into the American flag we know today with its red and white stripes. This also explains why the flag of Malaysia 🇲🇾 looks similar to the US flag, sort of a convergent evolution of the flag designs. It's also why the Singapore flag is red and white like that. It's foolish to claim that Monaco and Poland have the only claim over red and white flags!
People who claim their aesthetic beliefs are somehow objective truths are usually pretty insufferable. They can be good guiding principles for you to accomplish a certain vision, or to get a wider audience to like or understand what you want to express, but they're opinions on what some person likes at the end of the day.
I think the only real way to judge a flag is if the people that live there like it and use it. Maryland's flag doesn't follow design principles, but people in Maryland love their flag and you see it everywhere, it's a good flag. I'm from South Carolina, you see the Palmetto flag everywhere here and we love it, it's a good flag (also that Angel Oak flag he designed is hideous). The seal on background flags are never used at all unless there's a legal reason to use them. Regardless of their history, they are bad flags. I'd argue states with seal flags in practice don't actually have flags.
I largely agree. The flag of Milwaukee mentioned at 1:19:00 is rarely flown by random people as opposed to the much more popular and (currently) unofficial people's flag
When Premodernist mentioned near the end "there might be other principles of flag design I'm unaware of" I wondered what those might be. I think this one is excellent, especially for a democracy - what design is liked by the people it represents? Great thought, thanks for sharing.
I really do like CGPGrey, and I think he’s a nice guy, but man…. wayyyyy too many people have taken his word as Gospel on the flag stuff (myself included, for a time)
See, this is the problem with the Internet. The algorithm creates these silos and information bubbles and separates us before we have a chance to decide between multiple viewpoints, and suddenly large swaths of people form lasting opinions based on one loud, uninformed voice in a vacuum
Hey! Absolutely love your video, but as a Luxembourgish citizen, I have to correct you on 1:28:15. That flag at the end of Ted Kaye’s pamphlet I belive to be the provincial flag of Luxembourg in Belgium, but the flag you show on the video is the civil ensign of the Grand Duchy if Luxembourg, known as the Le Roude Léiw (which happens to be the only flag I own so I’m very familiar with the differences!), and although the province of Luxembourg in Belgium has a very similar flag to our national civil ensign, you put our civil ensign up on the screen when you were talking about the provincial flag. I’m glad you love it, though! Ted Kaye can’t hang 😂
Thanks! When I was editing I tried to find an image that matched the flag in the pamphlet and the civil ensign of the Grand Duchy looked closer (comparing the provincial flag and the civil ensign on Wikipedia). I'm actually not sure what the difference is. Is it a different shade of blue for the stripes? I just discovered the original image Ted Kaye used in the pamphlet, and it looks like he did mean to represent the civil ensign: www.fotw.info/flags/lu.html
Bro I'm a New Mexican over here getting jealous of Virginia's 18 colors (!!!) What a steal! we only get *two* for our money. :( That's New Mexico for ya ig. Awesome video as always dude :p this one was kind of cathartic. You're not alone in being irritated by this stuff. It's almost annoying enough to me to negate the consolation prize of our flag being one of the "good ones". This is a movement of people who don't understand their personal tastes aren't inherently superior to others, and then proceed to act on those delusions. There's no better example of what's wrong with this movement to me than the Navajo flag being used as a negative example in that pamphlet: first nations cultures didn't even have the arbitrary tradition of cloth banners and have adopted it on their own terms over the centuries, so that guy coming in as some self appointed non-navajo authority on whether this flag of the navajo nation is "good" or not is just *especially* gross to me. Like for real, how oblivious can you get! Just let people represent themselves how *they* see fit! ugh edit: damn. I just got to the bit where you were talking about Indonesia- WOOF that sure is *another* great example on why this stuff sucks, wtf
Thank you. These "vexillologists" like to look at flags in a big Book of Flags, and they want their flags to look consistent and clean on the page in a nice coherent set. But flags weren't created as a fun game of "collect-a-symbol". They're contingent, specific historical phenomena. They aren't pieces of design, or even art - they're pieces of *history*, which is where they derive their capacity to represent. Also, the flag of the Vexillogical Society of America is a beautiful representation of how terrible their principles are. What a boring, corporate, indistinguishable flag. Just like all the others designed by these types. In 20 years, they'll all look hopelessly dated.
Here's something you might have overlooked: standardization. These people *love* standards. A design that's complicated to recreate correctly will more easily result in diverging flags. If flags get printed without a beaver on the back, incorrect patterning, different shades or different amount of colours then they are off-standard! Off-model! In practice, this might not be a big deal, but to someone invested into standards or the sanctity of a flag, it would.
You also overlooked the idea of manufacturing your flag in other form factors, such as emoticons, mugs or carved stone. Amsterdams triple x makes its appearence on merch, but also on city architecture, on metal poles and carved stone decorations. This can be a minimal consideration depending on the purpose, but its not nothing.
@@qwertyman1511 he talked about this as it related to lapel pins, and i agree with his conclusion that its a foolish thing to think about pins or emojis in place of the actual flag itself. Divergence as youre describing it is irrelevant so long as it evokes the same imagery in your mind, i.e. the us flag which im sure does not have 50 defined stars in its emoji
@@restroomuser i know, but some people get irked by the fact that there are effectively multiple valid designs then, people who really love standardization.
There's a lot of regurgitation on RU-vid. It's weird to see it in historical and design topics. But I guess this is what happens when you abandon quality control and empower an algorithm that encourages repetition.
I don't know if I'm just crazy but I'm pretty sure those flags were hated well before he made any video about it. I remember people saying they're boring forever
I feel like Premodernist doesn't actually address the "Seal on a bedsheet" crowd, with the possible exception of Virginia. Most of the state flags he defends are "Coats of Arms on a bedsheet". Coats of arms are more distinctive than seals because seals are all circles, whereas coats vary the shield shape, flankers, etc.
I just want to tell you, i had watched CGP and been completely convinced without concern or question. I'm so glad you made this video because in the first 5 minutes i realized that i hadn't actually ever thought about the history of these flags and how that might be a valuable thing to preserve, especially these days where we have individuals calling for civil war again. I'm so glad i can see these videos you make, this is a huge gap in my modern understanding of the world and you are teaching me so much valuable information about history and the process of history, culture, and just life. Thank you for making these videos. I hope this venture is as profitable for your wallet and soul as it is for my mind.
As a child I loved drawing flags and I particularly liked the complicated ones because they made me dream about the different reasons why these symbols and images were on them.
I think a point you might have missed is that a lot of people expect flags to be iconic - to be themselves a symbol that can be easily replicated and applied to other media. That is just not the case with the seal and blue flags. The panflect atempts to set some guidelines for flags that are iconic and can be easily integrated into a community. Distinctiveness and simplicity help make a flag become a symbol that can be easily applied to other media like small objects, clothing, literal icons at sport events, emoji, etc. I think you failed to consider the places we use flags today the most - it is not flying literal flags but using them as icons on other media - that for the most part requires them to be somewhat simple or extremely distinctive.
just heard that awesome conclusion, and WOW I sincerely hope that just like that Gray video became a touchstone for the discussion of "good flag design," I hope this video touches off a little more respect for our flags. Thanks again for another awesome video!!
@@jrisner6535 Maybe so, but my main takeaway is that the full context of the history of a flag should be considered before calling it bad or jumping to redesign it.
I can never predict what I'll get next with your videos, which is almost something of a blessing because you make topics I hadn't really considered before very interesting
Monaco and Indonesia are identical except for the flag proportions. Romania and Chad have the same flag for all practical purposes. The exact hue and the proportions are slightly different but from a distance it's literally impossible to tell them apart. Luxemburg and the Netherlands differ only by the shade of blue and red. And these two are very close, almost neighbours. These are the "good" designs and there are many more examples.
In a vacuum, they're good designs, but Indonesia, Chad and Luxembourg ideally should have applied some changes to help further differentiate the designs from existing flags. Personally i think the Monaco/Indonesia flag is too simplistic, and ending up with an almost identical flag was almost inevitable.
The only time the similarity between the Romanian and Chadian flags is a problem is when you're crossing the Romania/Chad border. Otherwise I just don't see why it matters.
@premodernist I agree with you. I was making the point that there are many "good" flags that are similar to each other so the similarity argument doesn't really hold water.
@@qazsedcft2162 I know. I saw an opening for a joke and I took it. I think "Good Flag, Bad Flag" fans would say those flags should be changed too. But there's an inherent tension in principles #1 and #5. If you insist on simplicity then you'll inevitably get similar designs because there are tens of thousands of flags and only a finite number of ways you can combine a handful of basic colors and shapes.
"Good flag bad flag" is the vexillological equivalent of an architect saying "a good house design is drawable by a child from memory and uses no more than three colours". Nobody would take it seriously if someone applied such a broad rule to an entire category, so why should we take it any more seriously when it comes to flags?
False equivalence. A house in no way, shape or form functions like a flag does. Your literally comparing apples to oranges. The point about children being able to draw is not about literal children being able to reproduce the flag. It's about having a design that is recognizable, memorable and reproducible, which is definitely something a flag that should aspire to be.
Anyone who comes along and smugly declares that something doesn't fit the "established" rules, where the "rules" are made up by someone with a graphic design degree who'd otherwise be unemployed, should not be listened to. You don't get to make arbitrary rules and then say "this flag doesn't fit the rules that some guy I decided I like said, sorry, bye bye! Come back when you've developed something good looking, like the Facebook logo, or the Google logo! Only corporate logo design should be allowed on flags!" People watch a couple of videos on a topic, made by a non-expert, and then just make parroting those opinions into their personality as they go off and lecture on things like "good flag design," which they have no background in, yet feel incredibly entitled to lecture you on.
