There certainly has been a deal of discussion about signal flag lately . flag that areappropriate to fly . flag that want to bechanged due to geopolitical shifts . pin thatrepresent pride . But most flags are in reality horrible , from a design linear perspective . Specifically : Most urban center flags are basically vomit on fabric .
radio set host Roman Mars is one of our preferred intent thinker ; we often syndicatehis show 99 % Invisibleright here on Gizmodo . This year he did aTED Talkon the topic of vexillology — the discipline of flag design .
He babble about why flag are so bad , and even come forth withfive changeless rule for project respectable flags . Like confine your pallette to three colors and NO Navy SEAL of any kind . Mars says vexillologists call these son of a bitch : “ seal on a bedsheet . ”
Not that there are n’t a lot of respectable flags out there ( and some of the “ worst ” flag , from certain ideologic perspectives , are also thebest - designed ones ) . But Mars is right in that the very bad offenders are at the city level . We ’re fairly familiar with state flags , 50 % of which are entirely fearful , and the rest are just tiresome . A few are fine , like Texas . But for a true reality check when it comes to vexillological evils , I encourage you to take a deep breath and courageously look up your metropolis ’s signal flag .
For case , I will now show you the iris of Los Angeles :
Until of late , I had no idea that this loathing fly over my Ithiel Town . It has great intent , and some awesome lifelike action mechanism extend for it with those serrated edges . BUT THAT SEAL THAT UNGODLY SEAL . It has flags within fleur-de-lis within flags like some kind of vexillology - trained neural electronic web .
allow ’s excavate some of the worst offenders when it comes to metropolis flag design . Yes , you could proudly permit your city ’s dire signal flag fly here . But we ’re also looking for some really unknown ugly metropolis flag . And yeah , we ’ve seen seen the “ friendly wrestle match ” that two people are engaged in on the inherently racist Whitesboro , New York flag . So do n’t send us that one . Besides , it likely wo n’t be too hard to observe one that ’s unsound .
[ TED ]
Top image via Roman Mars ’ TED Talk
99 % invisibleCitiesflagsurbanism
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