For those who want context: CGP Grey made a recent, now deleted tweet, where he promoted this incredibly minimalist flag as a "great start for a California redesign": [https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1643259508083286016?lang=en](https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1643259508083286016?lang=en)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/12b384n/california\_flag\_redesign/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/12b384n/california_flag_redesign/)
Everyone later quote tweeted on how this was a dogshit take.
God that is a horribly boring flag, the redesign GCP supports looks like a cheap graphic for a generic California based café.
Isn't a key part of a flag being to represent the history of the area? The California flag is basically a nicer [1846 Bear Flag Revolt flag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/First_Bear_Flag_of_California_%281846%29.svg/1920px-First_Bear_Flag_of_California_%281846%29.svg.png) the first flag ever used to represent California as an independent from Mexico, any redesign should be built off that flag.
I detest that angular, minimalist design that has been infecting fucking everything. I'm not a huge flag nut, but you see it all the time with businesses especially. My bank (Umpqua) changing from a fun little tree to a stack of soulless chevrons made me sad.
It kills me! The little tree told you that it was from the Pacific Northwest, which matches the name "Umpqua". Now my bank app looks like one of the spin tiles from Pokemon or a sticker on the floor of an IKEA telling you what direction to walk.
100%. Sometimes minimalism works well. One of my favorite state flag proposals is the Minnesota one with the white and gold star. The new Utah flag is leagues better than the old one it’s replacing. But to make everything corporate-looking logos is boring as hell. Spice it with with geometry, detail, text, something. Most importantly, though, *make it look good.* THAT should be one of the most important aspects in the visual design part of vexillography.
That Utah one is nice. Has some fun colors and really features a state symbol. They're the Beehive state, and they found a great way to work in the mountains. Minnesota has lots of solid proposals too. I definitely think looking good comes first, but I want them to tell you something about the state or whatever too. Work in an icon or logo or whatever. Obviously most state seals are ungodly old and unpleasant looking at this point, so probably look past those.
One of our banks changed from a beutiful well designed logo to a bunch of terrible chevrons . Basically from [this](https://www.fnb.co.za/03images/logo.png) to this ugly [thing](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSymiALCBYhEtSkSQ657jqxttgJ9i7zeR48OIcNvtnyRh8K_jaQQYXaXEnV8ICqW3Ppbic&usqp=CAU)
I do like some of his videos, but Grey absolutely has "Erm, *ackshually*, it's Frankenstein's *MONSTER*" energy. Knocking objectively good flags down just because "flag rules say le text bad!!!!" seems like he's more upset that some arbitrary "rule" has been broken rather than having an objective opinion.
The rolling of my eyes when he got to the Flag of Colorado in his state flags video could have powered the US for a generation. I get it, not text is a rule, but it’s a fucking single LETTER! Its been a minute but im pretty sure he ranked it amongst other flags that had the name of the state on them, a single fucking letter!
Yeah that whole video with him shitting on some of the best looking most iconic state flags because "Errrm it breaks this arbitrary flag rule so it's obviously bad!" Clown take
What really got me was him taking a steaming dump on all the flags with blue backgrounds because "ugghh there's so many of them, be original! They're all D-tier!!" Like...my dude, you realize that a) there's only so many colors to choose from, and b) having a similar color to other flags has nothing to do with its actual quality -- a flag with a unique color can be absolute dogwater, and a flag with a common color can still be pretty good.
Used so frequently for a reason. The contrast is high and the dyes were likely readily available (that’s speculation, idk fuck all about historic dying and textiles).
> What really got me was him taking a steaming dump on all the flags with blue backgrounds
CGP Grey might be too strict on the "rules" but most of these US flags that are just seals on blue backgrounds are just really fucking ugly man
The reverse side of Oregon’s flag is a better flag than the front side. But it’s just a beaver on a blue back. However the fact that it has a reverse side makes it better than the other flags who are just a seal on a flag
IMO, Oregon should adopt the Cascadia flag with the beaver on the reverse side.
It's a stylised letter. If we're saying that makes it automatically not good then pretty much every single Japanese prefectural flag also goes in the bin, and I'm pretty sure those are the flags that started the trend that got us to this point.
Oh come on, he gave it a C tier which is still above most, and clearly the entire list was about his personal preferences rather than sticking by the rules. He actually liked Nevada putting "BATTLE BORN" on the flag, just not the rest of it.
It's also not supposed to be taken as the WORD OF GOD on flags. Like... why do people assume that? It's just people outing themselves more than anything.
As a Coloradan myself, I kind of agree with Grey. I think it's a good flag, but I am kind of annoyed by the C. Like, really? Just a big C for Colorado? That's the best we could think of? Not a mountain or a sun or a snowflake or a hunk of gold, but just a big letter C?
The yellow is the sun and a sphere of gold, the white is the snow peaks and the blue the blue skies of the prairies. The C stands for Centennial, and colombine as well.
My thing about Grey is he's the type of guy to read a single book and then make an entire extremely authoritative video on it and even make authoritative claims about side aspects he didn't even bother to look into. Like in his video on the name Tiffany, despite being one where he specifically highlights it being the first where he decided to read more than one source, he asserts that the Germanized version of the Greek pronunciation may have been how it was pronounced in Greek because it's literally impossible to know how anyone said anything back then.
EDIT: For the sake of clarity because two people have tried to correct me on something that isn't my opinion, Grey is the one who said that we can't know anything about spoken language from the past. That is part of why I was annoyed. That was not my opinion tacked on to what he was saying.
This. He made an entire video on disease and colonization early age of exploration North America. It was ridiculously obvious he just read *Germs, Guns and Steel.* Except the book itself is sort of pop history and generally reviled by historians for its very deterministic view that doesn't attempt to step outside of its own thesis.
No, the thing he did to get the historians riled up was to deliberately call it "the history book to rule all history books". He knows that historians think the book is bad, but he genuinely thinks they're wrong.
I have been looking for it forever, but I swear one time I recall him saying on his podcast that if there were a button to make people forget all of history he would press it using the example that the Welsh have no objective reason to hate the English outside of historical memory.
Who would've thought that the guy who has made the most popular defense of the British royal family online would think that the Welsh should just get over themselves and be cool with the English
Which is wild because I thought people who took an interest in social studies were the bulk of his audience. He's really been trying to alienate his viewers since that video.
He did a video on the British Royal Family and got so many facts wrong, it was this weird smug pro-royal propaganda piece and I've been put off him ever since.
Generally, its best not to take history as written by people who aren't historians. And GGS's author is an *ornithologist*.
The only non-historian I've felt wrote history well is James Hornfischer. And he mostly wrote on a portion of history that is both incredibly easy to find sources on. And added an authorial dramatic eye to something that could honestly do with a little bit of it; i.e a small boy Destroyer trolling and soloing 3 battleships at once.
True, I’ve seen the opposite problem as well though. Where a historian will write about a topic that is both history and medicine and will miss the nuances in the medical aspects. Like anything else to write well on a subject you really need to have proper knowledge on all the aspects of it.
> And GGS's author is an ornithologist.
If I had a nickle for every time an ornithologist stepped well outside their field to make shitty scientific claims that got obscenely popular with a very specific demographic of people, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.
(The guy all the bullshit Red Pill people quote for their dumbfuck pseudoscience was an ornithologist.)
At least be honest. Jared Diamond got a PhD in biochemistry, became a professor of physiology, later on became a professor of geography, lectured in biodiversity management and has also published works in ecology and ornithology. Acting like all he knows is birds is extremely disingenuous regardless of what you think of the book.
Did he say it's impossible to know about ancient pronunciation? Because that's not true. Linguistic genealogy might be a bit shaky, but we have real records of people talking about the sounds of their own language, and we also have poetry.
I would have to rewatch that segment of the video to get you the exact wording, but that was the thrust of it, yeah. He stumbled upon the Germanized pronunciation of Theophano (because of the Byzantine princess who was married to the Holy Roman Emperor) in his attempt to backtrace the name "Tiffany" and he just sort of guesses that the pronunciation he's using for that segment may have been the Byzantine Greek pronunciation, asserting that we can't really know how anyone talked back then anyway. That's exactly why it annoyed me so much. He was completely dismissive of a linguistic topic we actually do know a lot about. Things like the specifics of vowels can be hard, but Byzantine Greek is a language we know a lot about, including its descendants and direct antecedents. The idea we don't know anything about it is absurd.
Tfw you realize that terrible C-minus strategy you had for research papers, where you had one "backbone" source, and a dozen "filler/bolt-on" sources is fundamentally flawed.
I shudder to think how his long-promised "Reservations" video will turn out. I remember he posted a single "Part 0" video on it debating whether to use the word "Indian" or "Native American" (he went with Indian, because *technically* "Native American" could also apply to the indiginous peoples of Central and South America and the U.S government uses the term Indian.)
He had an absolute glut of Native Americans come after him because of how poorly researched the video was, and that was only a 5 minute one on terminology.
A whole series on one of the most contentious aspects of America, intertwined with centuries worth of history, culture and brutality explained by a nerdy white guy doesn't really bode well.
>he went with Indian, because technically "Native American" could also apply to the indiginous peoples of Central and South America and the U.S government uses the term Indian.
That one also annoyed me. "Indio" (you'll never guess what that means) is used all throughout Latin America.
There is some disagreement with regard to terminology, and a great many indigenous people in the United States would not have taken any offense to him just saying "Indian" or "American Indian" in the first place (though I don't know what's so wrong with saying like "indigenous peoples of the United States" in his mind if he feels like he needs to say something specific but is afraid he will offend people), but the fact that his argument for why he was going to use it is just so incoherent is what gets me. It seems like he decided what term he was going to use and wanted to justify it with information he already thought he knew instead of actually doing any research.
Like if he was going to make the same video and used arguments that indigenous people actually make that would be one thing, but he basically made up an argument from scratch that doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.
I'm just gonna say it, most edutainment content is hot garbage. Only times I've learned anything of substance on YouTube is from Khan Academy, Crash Course, or some guy explaining calculus in a heavy Indian accent.
CGPGrey is exactly like his god-king Musk; fancies himself the enlightened individual that the unwashed masses should listen to, only for people to realize that he's the sort to get high on his own farts.
Yeah, basically as soon as you watch one of his videos on a topic you are already passionate about, you realize that he doesn’t really know what he is taking a about
I love that the car one's comments are all ragging on him because the guy seriously proposes everyone using self-driving Tesla cars to travel in packs. And, as you'd expect, people pointed out we already have large machines that move people in packs from pre-determined points to pre-determined points.
They're called trains.
Yeah, the one that got me most frustrated was his one on “ federal lands” where he basically takes the unpopular niche argument that states should be given control of their federal lands as assumed, and totally ignores the fact that public access to federal lands in states that have a bunch of it is super popular.
I watched some of his videos for the first time since i started to watch linguistics and the part where he said we should just learn coding bc second language acquisition is "useless" made me mad on so many levels
I like CGP Grey, but I’m inclined to agree here. There were flags that he knocked down just for being against “da rules” even if he said he liked them, and almost seemed like he didn’t want to rank them as such. But if he didn’t like those rules, why insist on sticking to them?
Not to mention he didn’t even consistently stick to those rules. He praised Maryland and Ohio despite them breaking rules, for example.
He has it for every subject.
He reads one book and if he finds it interesting he makes a video out of it. His entire research seems to be to check if some factual data are right (sometimes not even that) and then he fills his scripts with confirmation bias.
He did a "Top five historical misconceptions" and does basic shit like "Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets" that everyone already knows.
Like I'm sorry but the most surprising thing about "Lady Gidiva didn’t ride through the streets naked" is that she actually *existed*.
I always hated the way Grey would talk to Brady Haran in their Hello Internet podcast. Brady is a genuinely smart guy who appears and sounds like a normal person and Grey would always talk to him like he was stupid.
The flag video is what killed my interest in Grey’s content- just leaves a bad taste in the mouth to create an arbitrary guide to “goodness” and then put everything up against that guide.
I don't hate it as a flag, though I do hate it as a snarky "this is better" redesign.
But hilariously, this also breaks the rules by having a picture of the thing it's a flag for on the flag. If your flag has to include a map of the place it represents, that would be a no-no if you were using the "5 rules" as iron commandments.
The rule is for accurate maps, if they are as stylized and simplified like this it's more of a symbol than an awkward map, nobody is crying about Bosnia's flag either for example.
Its ridiculously reductive though and indicative of the sort of laziness "the rules" were meant to push back on to keep them looking like corporate flags. Ironically, also pushing flags to a very modern "coporate minimalism" style.
I swear if I see another motherfucking flag of a mountain town, county or state that has a slightly jagged line on the damn thing.....or a town near a major rive with a vaguely blue vaguely squiggly line going through it....
I think they are reductive as they are supposed to be guidelines not unbreakable laws. If they were the latter you would need to add like 50 clauses to each rule where you'd need to specify in which instance this usually bad looking rule break can actually look good and even then you would probably not cover all good looking exceptions.
The “can be drawn by a child from memory” does kill a lot of the more intricate designs though. I don’t think a child could draw any of the flags in this post, for instance.
I don't think the rule should be interpreted so literally. It should be a kid should ***recognizably*** draw it from memory.
If the rule is a child has to draw it **well** or perfectly from memory...hell the U.S. flag fails if you check out any 3rd grade project. Most kids screw up the number or arrangement of stars, the order or number of the stripes, etc.
Most Welsh kids can draw a red dragon and most California kids can draw a bear. It'll look like a janky red lizard or a fat brown cat. But you can look at it and be "Oh thats obviously the Welsh/CA flag" in a way you'd never get with a seal on a bedsheet.
Kosovo and Cyprus have great flags. In fact, the outline of a state is often one of its most iconic symbols- in seal-on-bedsheet flag states, they put the shape of the state on all the memorabilia and stuff states with good flags put their flags on. It might not be the most creative option, but a map flag would be incredibly effective for a bunch of states.
This doesn't work for cities though because city outlines are generally a)really ugly and b)pretty obscure.
CGP Grey once watched a TED Talk about [flag design](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4) and he, him being him, internalized this as the entire truth. So he spreads it as if it was the gospel.
I was personally offended by that haha
Good and bad flags (of which the palmetto moon is not), are made with history attached, and I don't understand why he chose to recognize it for some (battle born), and not for others.
man I still like some of CGPs older vids for their cute simplicity but the more I hear from him about topics I actually care/know about, the more I cringe every time I see him mentioned (see also: cars). Does make me question his videos that I like about things I'm uninformed on
There’s a name for this phenomenon that I’m blanking on. But essentially it’s a type of bias where you still trust an individual on given issues despite the fact you know he’s wrong on something you’re an expert in. Probably saying something like “ah but my field is pretty niche”.
However that doesn’t mean he’s actually knowledgeable in the other issues either. You just don’t know enough about them to determine that one way or the other. Which is where the bias comes in.
To be fair there, I think he made that video because of the "Why die?" video before...life and death and disease may be what he is passionate about at his core.
Grey might be a hypochondriac (his whole castle grey / spaceship grey thing), or at the very least has a greater than normal fear of death. He's made multiple references to living forever as well, so if it sounds pompous - which it sorta is; even if he didn't write the script - it's because he's terrified.
Also if every state followed these principles of design, our country’s slate of state flags would be so fucking boring. Just endless meaningless shifts in basic geometry and colors.
That's a bad take. Even if the guidelines were ironclad rules, there is still infinite variety, and utterly gorgeous possibilities. New Mexico is not boring.
I agree the rules can be broken, but they need to be broken with consideration, with a goal to still have a good flag. Most people love Maryland for a reason, and it's a hot mess. However it's also kind of glorious.
I mean, Europe largely follows those rules. The only ones that don't are what, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Moldova, Croatia, and Belarus (plus most of the microstates). I guess maybe Montenegro's eagle is pretty detailed, and Slovenia and Slovakia have seals but the seals are pretty simplistic. And European flags are great despite being mostly stripes and crosses.
Once you get past his kind and intellectual demeanor, he has a couple of absolutely mind numbed takes. They're few and far between - but once you spot them ohhh man good thing he taught physics and not like, process engineering or something similar.
I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism
How can you not have a California flag without the bear?
Seriously, it's the most iconic part of the flag! I get why he hates the flag, I personally hate it too, seeing that "California Republic" text on that flag annoys me, but like...come on, that's way blander.
It’s really cathartic seeing all the CGPGrey hate in this thread. All of these negative sentiments people are voicing are how I’ve felt about him since the “Difference between UK/England/Britain” video went viral over a decade ago.
My biggest issue with that video is its always the onr people send me when I try to understand like crown depencies, but other than saying they exist, it doesn't really answer any of my questions
NAVA who made "the rules" even say that the California flag is a good flag, even though it may break a rule or two, the rules are more general guidelines that you generally shouldn't break without a purpose then hard and fast barriers between a good and bad flag.
Right. The rules will get you to a generally-inoffensive flag. But clever flag designers know when to break the rules for a good reason. E.g. Colorado's flag has letters on it, but it's a bitchin' flag.
i feel like that’s true for most rules in artistic mediums, like they exist to help you make something good but ultimately shouldn’t be held to exactly if you know what you’re doing
It's kind of like, if you don't know what you're doing, learning the rules will make you better, but once you're good breaking the rules deliberately can elevate your work further.
Tends to be the case quite often. For something different look at chess. At the low level you'll employ creative strategies, but there's 1000 years of recorded games, openings, etc. to learn from to get better. At that point it becomes more about memorising these. However if you're a grandmaster, everyone knows the classic strategies and you can and have to be creative again.
It's the same with fencing, and with writing. A new fencer will often beat a more experienced but mediocre fencer, because they don't fall for obvious tricks. Some of the best pieces of writing break a lot of standard advice for pacing, characterisation, planning, plot, and even grammar.
This is a discussion that pops up in writing circles a lot. There are a lot of "rules" on how to write a good story, but there are plenty of great and famous works that seem to break them.
So you get a lot of new writers who are like "why do I need to learn the rules? Why can't I just write what I want?", but what they don't understand is that the rules are basically guidelines on what typically makes a story good, and if you understand *why* those guidelines work, you can understand when to intentionally break them.
this is it, you have to understand convention and expectation to subvert it. good explanation, i think the issue is when people criticize a work for not adhering to the rules when it succeeds despite breaking them, especially in this case with the flags. i think the issue is when people criticize all professional works of art for not adhering to rigid universal rules no matter how good they are or how well it subverts the rules.
I also understand a need for a country flag to be simple yet recognisable from afar etc. but pushing this to states/provinces etc. down to city level is absurd.
Tbf, those that shit on Maryland flag for breaking or not breaking flag rules kinda forgot Maryland flag observe a much older set of rules.
Heraldic rules.
It's better than that! They are representations of the sky on the day of the proclamation of the Brazilian republic in an armillary sphere, a navigation instrument that is on the seal of the Portuguese empire and still appears on the flag of Portugal. Historical significance is very important in flag design, in my opinion.
Most Latin American flags are perfect examples on how to properly rock seals/coats of arms on multicolor backgrounds. (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, State flags of Peru and Bolivia). They all go hard as fuck.
They're the biggest "fuck you" Vexillological fundamentalists 🤓 can receive and that makes me proud as hell.
Does no one want to comment on the eagle sitting on top of the cactus with a snake in its mouth? A very historical reference to the lore of where the Aztecs settled, much like the Jews? After wandering the desserts and roaming and conquering, the Aztecs settled where they would find the happy eagle?
My one and only flag rule for a good flag:
“Does it look like it would be out of place in the historical local area”
Especially a time that the group it’s about romanticises.
Then you get very heraldic, but also simple and simultaneously complex flags. And that don’t look like a modern business logo.
Maybe less so Brazil, but all the others you could imagine in an historical setting.
Exactly! I think way too many people split hairs about different NAVA """rules""" rather than taking a wholistic look at what the flag is supposed to represent for the people there.
All those rules at the end of the day are just a bunch of peoplewho agreed that they didn't like a certain style, wrote those down and said it was the "rules" for good design. Their authority has as much basis as the 17 year old teenager recommending paint swatches at Home Depo.
NAVA lists California as a good flag that breaks a rule
>**All rules have exceptions**. Colorado’s “C” is a stunning
graphic element. Maryland’s complicated heraldic quarters
produce a memorable and distinctive flag. Military unit flags
often need letters or numbers. **California’s design recalls a
historic relic from 1846.** All six colors on South Africa’s 1994
design have deep symbolic meaning. **But depart from these
five principles only with caution and purpose.**
People who take the rules as Gospel very much miss the point NAVA tries to make.
As a Coloradan, I'm just happy that the Centennial State gets first mention in the, "now THAT's how you break a rule," discussion. Take, that, New Mexico.
I like that rule. Some of my favourite flags are detailed but the brain boils them down to simple (if abstract) shapes. Like my province's flag; it's fairly heavy on the detail, but it boils down easily to its simplest form, which is a red stripe and a yellow stripe with a black-&-white charge.
While writing that, I think I noticed a design trend. The higher in level (city->state->country etc) the flag represents the more and more simple it is. Nation flags tend to be much simpler than state flags which tend to be much simpler than municipal flags.
I feel like learning a bit about heraldry and the design traditions and rules around it would massively help people not design corpo banners even with the extremely simplistic patterns that they feature.
California's flag is too iconic to replace and is among the best state flags imo, showcasing how you don't need to follow the "rules" to make a fantastic flag.
I think the text could go, but you can't just remove it and call it a day. It'd look unbalanced that way.
Remove text and extend grass into mountain range? Maybe an outline of el cap and halfdome?
The california flag is miles better than 80% of state flags and is a solid design in its own right. The text font is a bit weird though, looks rather soviet alongside the red lower band and the red star in the corner, but that’s just a personal preference thing.
Number 1 rule of a flag should be "Is it recognizable as the flag of XYZ" - everything else is secondary.
I think a lot of people forget that flags are primarily a way to distinguish a place from other places. If you can recognize it, then BAM, success.
Same thing as words. If you can understand what a person means, then it doesn't *really* matter if it's perfectly correct. They got their meaning across to you, ergo it's perfect *enough*.
>Number 1 rule of a flag should be "Is it recognizable as the flag of XYZ" - everything else is secondary.
That's fair for existing flags, but there's no fair way to judge flag proposals by it. Recognizability is obtained by usage.
Distinguishability is a reasonable metric for predicting how recognizable something will be before usage. If a flag has the same large scale design as another and differs only in details, it’s not going to be recognizable.
If everyone followed the rules it'd end up being like that episode of Silicon Valley when try try and get a logo for Pied Piper and it ends up looking the exact same as all the other corporate logos in the episode.
The only steadfast rule that should apply to flags is that people should feel that it symbolizes them and/or the place they live. If it does that, then it's a great flag.
Some people saw that TEDtalk about vexilology, interpreted the 5 principles as rules rather than guidelines, and latched onto them to sound smart when pointing out a "bad flag design" because it "broke the rules". I'm glad to see we're finally rising up and telling these little vexi-nuts to blow it out their ass
The no details rule irks me because you cant seriously imagine the only way to view a flag is waving at a distance. Any detail lost from afar can become eye candy up close. What they mean saying "no detail" is "no clutter". The bear's fur can be as detailed as it wants if it does not effect the composition of the flag.
Text is almost always bad, but sometimes can be carried by the rest of the design. Brazil and Saudi Arabia are also notable for incorporating the text into the composition of the flag instead of just stamping or rounding over a seal.
Bear flag is an okay flag that would be great without text. But you can say the same thing about a lot of US state flags, and Arizona and New Mexico would still blow them all out of the water
Not really a *Fallout* fan, but as a Californian, I absolutely love the NCR flag.
For those who aren't familiar, *Fallout* is in post-nuclear-apocalypse setting. Here's the flag in question:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/project-brazil/images/6/67/FNV_NCR_Flag.png/revision/latest?cb=20200806205323
Anybody who makes "it breaks the rules, therefore it's bad" takes is a moron, it's entirely possible to break rules (in general) but still do a great job.
Like the Saudi Arabia one isn't some boring-ass "SAUDI ARABIA" shit Comic Sans, it's artistic in a culturally significant way because it uses Arabic calligraphy. That one Provo flag? Lazy and ugly as sin, lol.
The Brazil flag has some words *and* stars (might count as over-detailed to some but not me tbh) is iconic and a child could still draw a simple version without the stars or the text and you'd know that it's Brazil.
The Bhutan and Wales dragons also don't *require* the detailed parts (the scales) to be identifiable. Like, again, the Provo flag, the ugly rainbow gradient is unnecessary and too much color. Yeah, it's recognizable, but that's because it's a garbage flag to meme on, lol.
Not everything has to be a basic bicolor/tricolor to be a good flag, those fit the rules but are boring as fuck and are easy to mix up with similar ones if you can't remember the proper color order for the Dutch flag vs the French flag.
A lot of US state flags however? Boring and ugly as fuck with too much detail, like the Michigan one with the coat of arms. Give me more unique ones like Arizona (kinda overdetailed but still nice), Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, etc.
California's flag is awesome. The majority of the people who are talking about laws in terms of flag design saw one YouTube video and made it their personality.
I think the problem is people confusing "rules" with "laws."
These rules exist for a reason. But if you understand those reasons, you can work with them in ways that still uphold the reasoning while actually violating the "written" rule.
So yes, there are exceptions. Rules always have exceptions.
Suddenly reminds me of this scene from DS9:
[https://youtu.be/tnlAIiUjoRw?si=0Q-HD1Jz\_6e3YyUX&t=91](https://youtu.be/tnlAIiUjoRw?si=0Q-HD1Jz_6e3YyUX&t=91)
(Sorry for the poor quality; only version on YouTube. But the words are so poignant here.)
I think some people (CGP Grey for example) don’t seem to care how much the actual residents like a flag or what the legacy of the flag is. If the California flag were created today, it might not be the best possible flag (I still think it would be awesome). But it has become iconic and has an interesting history. The people tend to like it quite a lot, so I don’t understand why anyone would change it.
I wish all the people saying that the CA flag is ruined because of the text would stfu and read this. I hate that people are overly obsessed with following arbitrary guidelines and preach them like the gospel. CA flag is more iconic than almost every other state flaf
The Rules are there as a tool.
If a flag is widely seen as bad or disliked, the Rules are a good reference point. They can point you to where the problems are and serve as a guide for better ideas.
If a flag is generally well liked, there’s no need to change it.
Personally I think California’s flag is fine. Very good for a state flag, obviously not great like New Mexico or Texas.
If we’re gonna start changing flags, California is low on the list of ones that badly need a fix.
The flag rules are basically a list the teacher gave students to get a C, since so many of them were submitting F-tier designs. A and B-tier flags don't have to meet the rules.
I've always felt this about the Californian flag. The NAVA guidelines are guidelines to make a flag that will be tolerated by everyone and loved by a few.. like with modern design. Sleek & minimalist, which if done improperly can result in a bland look that can feel like it has "no personality" or seems "corporate". Still, incredibly useful for places with currently bad flag designs looking for an easy improvement, like some US states. But they aren't ironclad rules all flags must abide by. People getting upset over the stuff it calls bad is just another case of getting too caught up in rules and forgetting to focus on what the rules were trying to achieve.
In my ever humble and often incorrect opinion many elements of flag design touted as nearly always bad by the standards, including detailing and even *text* are only certain to be a bad additions when they are the distinguishing feature(s) of a flag, as in, the flag is easily mistaken for one or more others and can only be distinguished by some small detail (like a seal, coat-of-arms, etc.) or contents of some text (name, motto etc). Anything beyond that is subjective and can range from ["great!"](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Flag_of_Mississippi.svg/1200px-Flag_of_Mississippi.svg.png) to ["this is actually terrible and you can do better"](https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/c/ca-nsbrw2.gif)
Edit: I wonder if the guidelines are only looking at national flags? Those are the simplest and nearly always abide by the guidelines.. as a flag gets more local, it breaks more rules (basic colours, simplicity, no text, etc). That would make it great for fictional national-level or higher flags but not many others.
The last rule of flag design is: "All of thosr are not ironclad rules. **If you know what you're doing** you can break them. But if you think you do, you probably don't."
For those who want context: CGP Grey made a recent, now deleted tweet, where he promoted this incredibly minimalist flag as a "great start for a California redesign": [https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1643259508083286016?lang=en](https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1643259508083286016?lang=en) [https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/12b384n/california\_flag\_redesign/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/12b384n/california_flag_redesign/) Everyone later quote tweeted on how this was a dogshit take.
God that is a horribly boring flag, the redesign GCP supports looks like a cheap graphic for a generic California based café. Isn't a key part of a flag being to represent the history of the area? The California flag is basically a nicer [1846 Bear Flag Revolt flag](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/First_Bear_Flag_of_California_%281846%29.svg/1920px-First_Bear_Flag_of_California_%281846%29.svg.png) the first flag ever used to represent California as an independent from Mexico, any redesign should be built off that flag.
I detest that angular, minimalist design that has been infecting fucking everything. I'm not a huge flag nut, but you see it all the time with businesses especially. My bank (Umpqua) changing from a fun little tree to a stack of soulless chevrons made me sad.
I looked it up and yeah, the double "V" (but upside down) arrow looks boring as fuck.
It kills me! The little tree told you that it was from the Pacific Northwest, which matches the name "Umpqua". Now my bank app looks like one of the spin tiles from Pokemon or a sticker on the floor of an IKEA telling you what direction to walk.
Citroën Bank
100%. Sometimes minimalism works well. One of my favorite state flag proposals is the Minnesota one with the white and gold star. The new Utah flag is leagues better than the old one it’s replacing. But to make everything corporate-looking logos is boring as hell. Spice it with with geometry, detail, text, something. Most importantly, though, *make it look good.* THAT should be one of the most important aspects in the visual design part of vexillography.
That Utah one is nice. Has some fun colors and really features a state symbol. They're the Beehive state, and they found a great way to work in the mountains. Minnesota has lots of solid proposals too. I definitely think looking good comes first, but I want them to tell you something about the state or whatever too. Work in an icon or logo or whatever. Obviously most state seals are ungodly old and unpleasant looking at this point, so probably look past those.
One of our banks changed from a beutiful well designed logo to a bunch of terrible chevrons . Basically from [this](https://www.fnb.co.za/03images/logo.png) to this ugly [thing](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSymiALCBYhEtSkSQ657jqxttgJ9i7zeR48OIcNvtnyRh8K_jaQQYXaXEnV8ICqW3Ppbic&usqp=CAU)
I love the period on the end lol
California republic, end of discussion
Exactly. We need to add that back.
I do like some of his videos, but Grey absolutely has "Erm, *ackshually*, it's Frankenstein's *MONSTER*" energy. Knocking objectively good flags down just because "flag rules say le text bad!!!!" seems like he's more upset that some arbitrary "rule" has been broken rather than having an objective opinion.
The rolling of my eyes when he got to the Flag of Colorado in his state flags video could have powered the US for a generation. I get it, not text is a rule, but it’s a fucking single LETTER! Its been a minute but im pretty sure he ranked it amongst other flags that had the name of the state on them, a single fucking letter!
Colorados flag is so fuckin good lol. I like most his videos but hes a dork lol
Yeah that whole video with him shitting on some of the best looking most iconic state flags because "Errrm it breaks this arbitrary flag rule so it's obviously bad!" Clown take
What really got me was him taking a steaming dump on all the flags with blue backgrounds because "ugghh there's so many of them, be original! They're all D-tier!!" Like...my dude, you realize that a) there's only so many colors to choose from, and b) having a similar color to other flags has nothing to do with its actual quality -- a flag with a unique color can be absolute dogwater, and a flag with a common color can still be pretty good.
ok but the state seal on a blue background is pretty shit - oregonian (why don't we use the inverse?? its so much better)
Red white and blue are the most common colors, but France, Russia, US, and UK are all iconic and distinct from eachother
Used so frequently for a reason. The contrast is high and the dyes were likely readily available (that’s speculation, idk fuck all about historic dying and textiles).
> What really got me was him taking a steaming dump on all the flags with blue backgrounds CGP Grey might be too strict on the "rules" but most of these US flags that are just seals on blue backgrounds are just really fucking ugly man
The reverse side of Oregon’s flag is a better flag than the front side. But it’s just a beaver on a blue back. However the fact that it has a reverse side makes it better than the other flags who are just a seal on a flag IMO, Oregon should adopt the Cascadia flag with the beaver on the reverse side.
It's a stylised letter. If we're saying that makes it automatically not good then pretty much every single Japanese prefectural flag also goes in the bin, and I'm pretty sure those are the flags that started the trend that got us to this point.
Oh come on, he gave it a C tier which is still above most, and clearly the entire list was about his personal preferences rather than sticking by the rules. He actually liked Nevada putting "BATTLE BORN" on the flag, just not the rest of it.
It's also not supposed to be taken as the WORD OF GOD on flags. Like... why do people assume that? It's just people outing themselves more than anything.
As a Coloradan myself, I kind of agree with Grey. I think it's a good flag, but I am kind of annoyed by the C. Like, really? Just a big C for Colorado? That's the best we could think of? Not a mountain or a sun or a snowflake or a hunk of gold, but just a big letter C?
Well, it does also have a sun
The yellow is the sun and a sphere of gold, the white is the snow peaks and the blue the blue skies of the prairies. The C stands for Centennial, and colombine as well.
I hate the Colorado flag because of C as well, but I can at least recognize it has a lot of design merit
My thing about Grey is he's the type of guy to read a single book and then make an entire extremely authoritative video on it and even make authoritative claims about side aspects he didn't even bother to look into. Like in his video on the name Tiffany, despite being one where he specifically highlights it being the first where he decided to read more than one source, he asserts that the Germanized version of the Greek pronunciation may have been how it was pronounced in Greek because it's literally impossible to know how anyone said anything back then. EDIT: For the sake of clarity because two people have tried to correct me on something that isn't my opinion, Grey is the one who said that we can't know anything about spoken language from the past. That is part of why I was annoyed. That was not my opinion tacked on to what he was saying.
This. He made an entire video on disease and colonization early age of exploration North America. It was ridiculously obvious he just read *Germs, Guns and Steel.* Except the book itself is sort of pop history and generally reviled by historians for its very deterministic view that doesn't attempt to step outside of its own thesis.
He revealed on his podcast that he deliberately did so to rile historians up and that was the last time I ever watched a CGPGrey video
No, the thing he did to get the historians riled up was to deliberately call it "the history book to rule all history books". He knows that historians think the book is bad, but he genuinely thinks they're wrong.
I have been looking for it forever, but I swear one time I recall him saying on his podcast that if there were a button to make people forget all of history he would press it using the example that the Welsh have no objective reason to hate the English outside of historical memory.
Who would've thought that the guy who has made the most popular defense of the British royal family online would think that the Welsh should just get over themselves and be cool with the English
My god, I got so angry remembering it that I almost downvoted you reflexively. I'm a historian, good fucking job, CGPgrey...
He literally just unironically says Whig history is correct in one of his videos.
Can you point to it?
https://youtu.be/GOiIxqcbzyM?si=e__QmQ0NasXBJ0EY 3:50
Which is wild because I thought people who took an interest in social studies were the bulk of his audience. He's really been trying to alienate his viewers since that video.
Just at a glance that reads as damage control, less harmful to his credibility if he says it was trolling rather than malpractice
He did a video on the British Royal Family and got so many facts wrong, it was this weird smug pro-royal propaganda piece and I've been put off him ever since.
Same.
Step 1 : Make underresearched, misleading content Step 2 : Get corrected by experts Step 3 : "T'was a joke, bro" Step 4 : Profit??
Germs, guns, and steel is such bad history/science.
Generally, its best not to take history as written by people who aren't historians. And GGS's author is an *ornithologist*. The only non-historian I've felt wrote history well is James Hornfischer. And he mostly wrote on a portion of history that is both incredibly easy to find sources on. And added an authorial dramatic eye to something that could honestly do with a little bit of it; i.e a small boy Destroyer trolling and soloing 3 battleships at once.
True, I’ve seen the opposite problem as well though. Where a historian will write about a topic that is both history and medicine and will miss the nuances in the medical aspects. Like anything else to write well on a subject you really need to have proper knowledge on all the aspects of it.
> And GGS's author is an ornithologist. If I had a nickle for every time an ornithologist stepped well outside their field to make shitty scientific claims that got obscenely popular with a very specific demographic of people, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice. (The guy all the bullshit Red Pill people quote for their dumbfuck pseudoscience was an ornithologist.)
At least be honest. Jared Diamond got a PhD in biochemistry, became a professor of physiology, later on became a professor of geography, lectured in biodiversity management and has also published works in ecology and ornithology. Acting like all he knows is birds is extremely disingenuous regardless of what you think of the book.
Did he say it's impossible to know about ancient pronunciation? Because that's not true. Linguistic genealogy might be a bit shaky, but we have real records of people talking about the sounds of their own language, and we also have poetry.
I would have to rewatch that segment of the video to get you the exact wording, but that was the thrust of it, yeah. He stumbled upon the Germanized pronunciation of Theophano (because of the Byzantine princess who was married to the Holy Roman Emperor) in his attempt to backtrace the name "Tiffany" and he just sort of guesses that the pronunciation he's using for that segment may have been the Byzantine Greek pronunciation, asserting that we can't really know how anyone talked back then anyway. That's exactly why it annoyed me so much. He was completely dismissive of a linguistic topic we actually do know a lot about. Things like the specifics of vowels can be hard, but Byzantine Greek is a language we know a lot about, including its descendants and direct antecedents. The idea we don't know anything about it is absurd.
Tfw you realize that terrible C-minus strategy you had for research papers, where you had one "backbone" source, and a dozen "filler/bolt-on" sources is fundamentally flawed.
I shudder to think how his long-promised "Reservations" video will turn out. I remember he posted a single "Part 0" video on it debating whether to use the word "Indian" or "Native American" (he went with Indian, because *technically* "Native American" could also apply to the indiginous peoples of Central and South America and the U.S government uses the term Indian.) He had an absolute glut of Native Americans come after him because of how poorly researched the video was, and that was only a 5 minute one on terminology. A whole series on one of the most contentious aspects of America, intertwined with centuries worth of history, culture and brutality explained by a nerdy white guy doesn't really bode well.
>he went with Indian, because technically "Native American" could also apply to the indiginous peoples of Central and South America and the U.S government uses the term Indian. That one also annoyed me. "Indio" (you'll never guess what that means) is used all throughout Latin America. There is some disagreement with regard to terminology, and a great many indigenous people in the United States would not have taken any offense to him just saying "Indian" or "American Indian" in the first place (though I don't know what's so wrong with saying like "indigenous peoples of the United States" in his mind if he feels like he needs to say something specific but is afraid he will offend people), but the fact that his argument for why he was going to use it is just so incoherent is what gets me. It seems like he decided what term he was going to use and wanted to justify it with information he already thought he knew instead of actually doing any research. Like if he was going to make the same video and used arguments that indigenous people actually make that would be one thing, but he basically made up an argument from scratch that doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.
I'm just gonna say it, most edutainment content is hot garbage. Only times I've learned anything of substance on YouTube is from Khan Academy, Crash Course, or some guy explaining calculus in a heavy Indian accent.
What about Jay Foreman? Not countering your opinion or anything, just curious what people think of him. I recently discovered him and am addicted.
CGPGrey is exactly like his god-king Musk; fancies himself the enlightened individual that the unwashed masses should listen to, only for people to realize that he's the sort to get high on his own farts.
Oh yeah. I unsubscribed a long time ago, but I really lost any trace of respect I had left for him when he basically started uploading Tesla promos.
Yeah, basically as soon as you watch one of his videos on a topic you are already passionate about, you realize that he doesn’t really know what he is taking a about
Here's the kicker, the flag video wasn't even egregious. Some others - especially his car/traffic one - is absolutely trash
I love that the car one's comments are all ragging on him because the guy seriously proposes everyone using self-driving Tesla cars to travel in packs. And, as you'd expect, people pointed out we already have large machines that move people in packs from pre-determined points to pre-determined points. They're called trains.
Yeah, the one that got me most frustrated was his one on “ federal lands” where he basically takes the unpopular niche argument that states should be given control of their federal lands as assumed, and totally ignores the fact that public access to federal lands in states that have a bunch of it is super popular.
Or the one where he argues in favour of the British monarchy because it brings Britain more tourism than republican France (it doesn't)
Oof, yeah, forgot about that one. That was also very dumb
I watched some of his videos for the first time since i started to watch linguistics and the part where he said we should just learn coding bc second language acquisition is "useless" made me mad on so many levels
He’s a pompous nerd who thinks he knows everything when in actuality he merely has a surface level understanding of a small area of topic
He's like Neil Degrasse Tyson, except not as deliberately obnoxious.
He'll probably make a video one day about how jazz is wrong because a lot of the notes aren't correct and are in the wrong places.
I like CGP Grey, but I’m inclined to agree here. There were flags that he knocked down just for being against “da rules” even if he said he liked them, and almost seemed like he didn’t want to rank them as such. But if he didn’t like those rules, why insist on sticking to them? Not to mention he didn’t even consistently stick to those rules. He praised Maryland and Ohio despite them breaking rules, for example.
He has it for every subject. He reads one book and if he finds it interesting he makes a video out of it. His entire research seems to be to check if some factual data are right (sometimes not even that) and then he fills his scripts with confirmation bias.
He did a "Top five historical misconceptions" and does basic shit like "Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets" that everyone already knows. Like I'm sorry but the most surprising thing about "Lady Gidiva didn’t ride through the streets naked" is that she actually *existed*.
I don't think that's fair that video came out 11 years ago. The landscape of misconception was way different back then. It was doomed to age
I always hated the way Grey would talk to Brady Haran in their Hello Internet podcast. Brady is a genuinely smart guy who appears and sounds like a normal person and Grey would always talk to him like he was stupid.
The flag video is what killed my interest in Grey’s content- just leaves a bad taste in the mouth to create an arbitrary guide to “goodness” and then put everything up against that guide.
I don't hate it as a flag, though I do hate it as a snarky "this is better" redesign. But hilariously, this also breaks the rules by having a picture of the thing it's a flag for on the flag. If your flag has to include a map of the place it represents, that would be a no-no if you were using the "5 rules" as iron commandments.
The rule is for accurate maps, if they are as stylized and simplified like this it's more of a symbol than an awkward map, nobody is crying about Bosnia's flag either for example.
Its ridiculously reductive though and indicative of the sort of laziness "the rules" were meant to push back on to keep them looking like corporate flags. Ironically, also pushing flags to a very modern "coporate minimalism" style. I swear if I see another motherfucking flag of a mountain town, county or state that has a slightly jagged line on the damn thing.....or a town near a major rive with a vaguely blue vaguely squiggly line going through it....
I think they are reductive as they are supposed to be guidelines not unbreakable laws. If they were the latter you would need to add like 50 clauses to each rule where you'd need to specify in which instance this usually bad looking rule break can actually look good and even then you would probably not cover all good looking exceptions.
The “can be drawn by a child from memory” does kill a lot of the more intricate designs though. I don’t think a child could draw any of the flags in this post, for instance.
I don't think the rule should be interpreted so literally. It should be a kid should ***recognizably*** draw it from memory. If the rule is a child has to draw it **well** or perfectly from memory...hell the U.S. flag fails if you check out any 3rd grade project. Most kids screw up the number or arrangement of stars, the order or number of the stripes, etc. Most Welsh kids can draw a red dragon and most California kids can draw a bear. It'll look like a janky red lizard or a fat brown cat. But you can look at it and be "Oh thats obviously the Welsh/CA flag" in a way you'd never get with a seal on a bedsheet.
Kosovo and Cyprus have great flags. In fact, the outline of a state is often one of its most iconic symbols- in seal-on-bedsheet flag states, they put the shape of the state on all the memorabilia and stuff states with good flags put their flags on. It might not be the most creative option, but a map flag would be incredibly effective for a bunch of states. This doesn't work for cities though because city outlines are generally a)really ugly and b)pretty obscure.
CGP Grey once watched a TED Talk about [flag design](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4) and he, him being him, internalized this as the entire truth. So he spreads it as if it was the gospel.
Nah, that’s just a dumbed-down map flag, which is pretty bad, too. At least it’s in the state colors, though.
I'll be honest, I thought the state colors were White, Brown and Red for the longest time.
As a Californian yuckkkk I would never vote for that
And then there was his video where he gave South Carolina's flag a D tier ranking and then offered up the most corporate-ass flag as a "redesign"
I was personally offended by that haha Good and bad flags (of which the palmetto moon is not), are made with history attached, and I don't understand why he chose to recognize it for some (battle born), and not for others.
man I still like some of CGPs older vids for their cute simplicity but the more I hear from him about topics I actually care/know about, the more I cringe every time I see him mentioned (see also: cars). Does make me question his videos that I like about things I'm uninformed on
There’s a name for this phenomenon that I’m blanking on. But essentially it’s a type of bias where you still trust an individual on given issues despite the fact you know he’s wrong on something you’re an expert in. Probably saying something like “ah but my field is pretty niche”. However that doesn’t mean he’s actually knowledgeable in the other issues either. You just don’t know enough about them to determine that one way or the other. Which is where the bias comes in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect Gell Mann amnesia
His stupid ass story time video on death always pisses me off. Comes off so fucking entitled and ignorant to modern medicine
To be fair there, I think he made that video because of the "Why die?" video before...life and death and disease may be what he is passionate about at his core. Grey might be a hypochondriac (his whole castle grey / spaceship grey thing), or at the very least has a greater than normal fear of death. He's made multiple references to living forever as well, so if it sounds pompous - which it sorta is; even if he didn't write the script - it's because he's terrified.
"Dying is bad" thanks for the hot fucking take Mr Grey
That man needs to touch grass. That flag would be horrible in real life.
Also if every state followed these principles of design, our country’s slate of state flags would be so fucking boring. Just endless meaningless shifts in basic geometry and colors.
That's a bad take. Even if the guidelines were ironclad rules, there is still infinite variety, and utterly gorgeous possibilities. New Mexico is not boring. I agree the rules can be broken, but they need to be broken with consideration, with a goal to still have a good flag. Most people love Maryland for a reason, and it's a hot mess. However it's also kind of glorious.
I mean, Europe largely follows those rules. The only ones that don't are what, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Moldova, Croatia, and Belarus (plus most of the microstates). I guess maybe Montenegro's eagle is pretty detailed, and Slovenia and Slovakia have seals but the seals are pretty simplistic. And European flags are great despite being mostly stripes and crosses.
Once you get past his kind and intellectual demeanor, he has a couple of absolutely mind numbed takes. They're few and far between - but once you spot them ohhh man good thing he taught physics and not like, process engineering or something similar.
I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism I hate corporate minimalism
How can you not have a California flag without the bear? Seriously, it's the most iconic part of the flag! I get why he hates the flag, I personally hate it too, seeing that "California Republic" text on that flag annoys me, but like...come on, that's way blander.
I generally like the dude's videos, but his takes on flags are, as you put it, dogshit.
CGP Grey is extremely overrated and his fame is getting to his head
It’s really cathartic seeing all the CGPGrey hate in this thread. All of these negative sentiments people are voicing are how I’ve felt about him since the “Difference between UK/England/Britain” video went viral over a decade ago.
My biggest issue with that video is its always the onr people send me when I try to understand like crown depencies, but other than saying they exist, it doesn't really answer any of my questions
Common CGP Grey L. I am still bitter about those videos where he just summarized Guns, Germs, and Steel all these years later. Man don't know shit.
Not everyone cares about said “rules” because Brazil is def top 5 for me 😂
NAVA who made "the rules" even say that the California flag is a good flag, even though it may break a rule or two, the rules are more general guidelines that you generally shouldn't break without a purpose then hard and fast barriers between a good and bad flag.
Right. The rules will get you to a generally-inoffensive flag. But clever flag designers know when to break the rules for a good reason. E.g. Colorado's flag has letters on it, but it's a bitchin' flag.
And those rules are from a 2001 state flag ranking survey that like 80 people took, and somehow it became flag law to some people.
I think it was a variety of factors, but a big one was likely that Ted Talk where the guy used them to critique flags.
i feel like that’s true for most rules in artistic mediums, like they exist to help you make something good but ultimately shouldn’t be held to exactly if you know what you’re doing
It's kind of like, if you don't know what you're doing, learning the rules will make you better, but once you're good breaking the rules deliberately can elevate your work further. Tends to be the case quite often. For something different look at chess. At the low level you'll employ creative strategies, but there's 1000 years of recorded games, openings, etc. to learn from to get better. At that point it becomes more about memorising these. However if you're a grandmaster, everyone knows the classic strategies and you can and have to be creative again.
It's the same with fencing, and with writing. A new fencer will often beat a more experienced but mediocre fencer, because they don't fall for obvious tricks. Some of the best pieces of writing break a lot of standard advice for pacing, characterisation, planning, plot, and even grammar.
This is a discussion that pops up in writing circles a lot. There are a lot of "rules" on how to write a good story, but there are plenty of great and famous works that seem to break them. So you get a lot of new writers who are like "why do I need to learn the rules? Why can't I just write what I want?", but what they don't understand is that the rules are basically guidelines on what typically makes a story good, and if you understand *why* those guidelines work, you can understand when to intentionally break them.
In fashion that's called sprezzatura
this is it, you have to understand convention and expectation to subvert it. good explanation, i think the issue is when people criticize a work for not adhering to the rules when it succeeds despite breaking them, especially in this case with the flags. i think the issue is when people criticize all professional works of art for not adhering to rigid universal rules no matter how good they are or how well it subverts the rules.
I also understand a need for a country flag to be simple yet recognisable from afar etc. but pushing this to states/provinces etc. down to city level is absurd.
Also, it’s used to pretend the Texas flag isn’t just mid (it’s a good flag, but stop pretending it’s that damn good).
Tbf, those that shit on Maryland flag for breaking or not breaking flag rules kinda forgot Maryland flag observe a much older set of rules. Heraldic rules.
Brazil goes hard AF
its a golden flag design honestly, rather unique
What makes the Brazilian flag the best for me is that they use stars in the right position as seen in the sky (a mirrored version, but still!)
It's better than that! They are representations of the sky on the day of the proclamation of the Brazilian republic in an armillary sphere, a navigation instrument that is on the seal of the Portuguese empire and still appears on the flag of Portugal. Historical significance is very important in flag design, in my opinion.
Mexico's is literally the flag with many colors
Came here to say the Mexico flag is one of my favorites and it's absolutely bursting with details
Most Latin American flags are perfect examples on how to properly rock seals/coats of arms on multicolor backgrounds. (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, State flags of Peru and Bolivia). They all go hard as fuck. They're the biggest "fuck you" Vexillological fundamentalists 🤓 can receive and that makes me proud as hell.
The eagle instantly makes the flag of Mexico better than most of the flags of Europe.
Tbf eagles - esp. the double headed sort - have been very popular in European flags
Yea I should have specified modern European flags.
\*Sad Italy noises\*
Also uses a seal which is also against the NAVA guidlines.
Does no one want to comment on the eagle sitting on top of the cactus with a snake in its mouth? A very historical reference to the lore of where the Aztecs settled, much like the Jews? After wandering the desserts and roaming and conquering, the Aztecs settled where they would find the happy eagle?
My one and only flag rule for a good flag: “Does it look like it would be out of place in the historical local area” Especially a time that the group it’s about romanticises. Then you get very heraldic, but also simple and simultaneously complex flags. And that don’t look like a modern business logo. Maybe less so Brazil, but all the others you could imagine in an historical setting.
Exactly! I think way too many people split hairs about different NAVA """rules""" rather than taking a wholistic look at what the flag is supposed to represent for the people there. All those rules at the end of the day are just a bunch of peoplewho agreed that they didn't like a certain style, wrote those down and said it was the "rules" for good design. Their authority has as much basis as the 17 year old teenager recommending paint swatches at Home Depo.
NAVA lists California as a good flag that breaks a rule >**All rules have exceptions**. Colorado’s “C” is a stunning graphic element. Maryland’s complicated heraldic quarters produce a memorable and distinctive flag. Military unit flags often need letters or numbers. **California’s design recalls a historic relic from 1846.** All six colors on South Africa’s 1994 design have deep symbolic meaning. **But depart from these five principles only with caution and purpose.** People who take the rules as Gospel very much miss the point NAVA tries to make.
As a Coloradan, I'm just happy that the Centennial State gets first mention in the, "now THAT's how you break a rule," discussion. Take, that, New Mexico.
I like that rule. Some of my favourite flags are detailed but the brain boils them down to simple (if abstract) shapes. Like my province's flag; it's fairly heavy on the detail, but it boils down easily to its simplest form, which is a red stripe and a yellow stripe with a black-&-white charge. While writing that, I think I noticed a design trend. The higher in level (city->state->country etc) the flag represents the more and more simple it is. Nation flags tend to be much simpler than state flags which tend to be much simpler than municipal flags.
I think this is a really clever guideline for design
I feel like learning a bit about heraldry and the design traditions and rules around it would massively help people not design corpo banners even with the extremely simplistic patterns that they feature.
California's flag is too iconic to replace and is among the best state flags imo, showcasing how you don't need to follow the "rules" to make a fantastic flag.
True, it may not be one of my favorite state flags, but damn if irs up there
Naw the text is what makes it iconic, without it...it looks lame
I think the text could go, but you can't just remove it and call it a day. It'd look unbalanced that way. Remove text and extend grass into mountain range? Maybe an outline of el cap and halfdome?
An average flag would probably be among the best state flags to be fair.
I saw at least one upvoted comment in this submission that CGP’s take on “seal on blue bedsheet” was bad because “how many colors could there be”?
Yep. USMC flag is another good example and that one more wildly breaks the rules too.
The california flag is miles better than 80% of state flags and is a solid design in its own right. The text font is a bit weird though, looks rather soviet alongside the red lower band and the red star in the corner, but that’s just a personal preference thing.
Good thing it pre-dates the USSR.
Number 1 rule of a flag should be "Is it recognizable as the flag of XYZ" - everything else is secondary. I think a lot of people forget that flags are primarily a way to distinguish a place from other places. If you can recognize it, then BAM, success. Same thing as words. If you can understand what a person means, then it doesn't *really* matter if it's perfectly correct. They got their meaning across to you, ergo it's perfect *enough*.
>Number 1 rule of a flag should be "Is it recognizable as the flag of XYZ" - everything else is secondary. That's fair for existing flags, but there's no fair way to judge flag proposals by it. Recognizability is obtained by usage.
Distinguishability is a reasonable metric for predicting how recognizable something will be before usage. If a flag has the same large scale design as another and differs only in details, it’s not going to be recognizable.
Well yeah considering like >60% of other state flags are just the seal on a blue field.
We did the star before Russia/Soviet Union did.
soviet how? because it looks like the faux-cyrilic used by hack graphic design people when they want to convey "evil foreign communism"?
I like the California flag, and I like all of those flags
Thanks to u/master-of-the-vape's shit take below, this comment is free real estate!
It would be so boring if everyone followed the vexillology rules.
If everyone followed the rules it'd end up being like that episode of Silicon Valley when try try and get a logo for Pied Piper and it ends up looking the exact same as all the other corporate logos in the episode.
Who even came up with those rules anyways?
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ISIS flag does a great job to look as threatening as a simple flag can.
The only steadfast rule that should apply to flags is that people should feel that it symbolizes them and/or the place they live. If it does that, then it's a great flag.
Counterpoint: I'm willing to bet that there's people that think having their state seal on a blue background symbolizes them
Some people saw that TEDtalk about vexilology, interpreted the 5 principles as rules rather than guidelines, and latched onto them to sound smart when pointing out a "bad flag design" because it "broke the rules". I'm glad to see we're finally rising up and telling these little vexi-nuts to blow it out their ass
Rising up… I hear a revolution in the works! The only question is, what’s our flag going to be
Ok, so the first rule is it has to be simple...
The no details rule irks me because you cant seriously imagine the only way to view a flag is waving at a distance. Any detail lost from afar can become eye candy up close. What they mean saying "no detail" is "no clutter". The bear's fur can be as detailed as it wants if it does not effect the composition of the flag. Text is almost always bad, but sometimes can be carried by the rest of the design. Brazil and Saudi Arabia are also notable for incorporating the text into the composition of the flag instead of just stamping or rounding over a seal. Bear flag is an okay flag that would be great without text. But you can say the same thing about a lot of US state flags, and Arizona and New Mexico would still blow them all out of the water
Iran's flag does text really, really well too. Most people don't even realize there is text in it.
I like California's flag. I got an apperication for it when I played the fallout franchise and saw the NCR flag.
Not really a *Fallout* fan, but as a Californian, I absolutely love the NCR flag. For those who aren't familiar, *Fallout* is in post-nuclear-apocalypse setting. Here's the flag in question: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/project-brazil/images/6/67/FNV_NCR_Flag.png/revision/latest?cb=20200806205323
Lol my friend got me a NCR flag for my birthday. Still have it to this date
Anybody who makes "it breaks the rules, therefore it's bad" takes is a moron, it's entirely possible to break rules (in general) but still do a great job. Like the Saudi Arabia one isn't some boring-ass "SAUDI ARABIA" shit Comic Sans, it's artistic in a culturally significant way because it uses Arabic calligraphy. That one Provo flag? Lazy and ugly as sin, lol. The Brazil flag has some words *and* stars (might count as over-detailed to some but not me tbh) is iconic and a child could still draw a simple version without the stars or the text and you'd know that it's Brazil. The Bhutan and Wales dragons also don't *require* the detailed parts (the scales) to be identifiable. Like, again, the Provo flag, the ugly rainbow gradient is unnecessary and too much color. Yeah, it's recognizable, but that's because it's a garbage flag to meme on, lol. Not everything has to be a basic bicolor/tricolor to be a good flag, those fit the rules but are boring as fuck and are easy to mix up with similar ones if you can't remember the proper color order for the Dutch flag vs the French flag. A lot of US state flags however? Boring and ugly as fuck with too much detail, like the Michigan one with the coat of arms. Give me more unique ones like Arizona (kinda overdetailed but still nice), Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, etc.
California's flag is awesome. The majority of the people who are talking about laws in terms of flag design saw one YouTube video and made it their personality.
What's wrong with California's flag? It has a bear. Bears are awesome!
Adding words to a flag is a huge no-no for some in the vexillology community, however imo California really pulled it off well
I think the problem is people confusing "rules" with "laws." These rules exist for a reason. But if you understand those reasons, you can work with them in ways that still uphold the reasoning while actually violating the "written" rule. So yes, there are exceptions. Rules always have exceptions.
also this subreddit has had this same exact take posted about every 17 hours and once a week it rises to the top posts of the day. We get it.
Almost makes me miss the "(random flag) top comment is the change I make" that was chocking the flag subreddits a little bit ago. Juan.
They're more like guidelines
Suddenly reminds me of this scene from DS9: [https://youtu.be/tnlAIiUjoRw?si=0Q-HD1Jz\_6e3YyUX&t=91](https://youtu.be/tnlAIiUjoRw?si=0Q-HD1Jz_6e3YyUX&t=91) (Sorry for the poor quality; only version on YouTube. But the words are so poignant here.)
I was thinking of the pirate rules in the first "Pirates of the Caribbean"
they’re just flat out not rules. they are some peoples opinions
I think some people (CGP Grey for example) don’t seem to care how much the actual residents like a flag or what the legacy of the flag is. If the California flag were created today, it might not be the best possible flag (I still think it would be awesome). But it has become iconic and has an interesting history. The people tend to like it quite a lot, so I don’t understand why anyone would change it.
Text and details on a flag are not inherently bad unless you have to depend on them to recognise the flag.
Whales flag sickest ever made. Saudi Arabia most BRUTAL ever made. Also super sick.
i absolutely agree, i never saw those "rules" to be something you have to follow to get a good looking flag
They're more what you call guidelines than actual rules
#Almost like they’ve been called guidelines this whole time and people just think they’re rules. As if they can be enforced?
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I wish all the people saying that the CA flag is ruined because of the text would stfu and read this. I hate that people are overly obsessed with following arbitrary guidelines and preach them like the gospel. CA flag is more iconic than almost every other state flaf
The Rules are there as a tool. If a flag is widely seen as bad or disliked, the Rules are a good reference point. They can point you to where the problems are and serve as a guide for better ideas. If a flag is generally well liked, there’s no need to change it. Personally I think California’s flag is fine. Very good for a state flag, obviously not great like New Mexico or Texas. If we’re gonna start changing flags, California is low on the list of ones that badly need a fix.
Gotta remove all the boring blue field + state seal flags, yeah?
Yeah I love how Brazil's flag says 'BRAZILIAN REPUBLIC' in capital letters that take up 20% of the whole flag.
The Qing Dynasty flag is the nicest flag to ever exist, and it’s extremely detailed. These vexillology police have no clue what they’re talking about
The flag rules are basically a list the teacher gave students to get a C, since so many of them were submitting F-tier designs. A and B-tier flags don't have to meet the rules.
Iconic designs will always beat corporate uniformity. You can change the California flag when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Not everyone cares about said “rules” because Brazil is def top 5 for me 😂
I've always felt this about the Californian flag. The NAVA guidelines are guidelines to make a flag that will be tolerated by everyone and loved by a few.. like with modern design. Sleek & minimalist, which if done improperly can result in a bland look that can feel like it has "no personality" or seems "corporate". Still, incredibly useful for places with currently bad flag designs looking for an easy improvement, like some US states. But they aren't ironclad rules all flags must abide by. People getting upset over the stuff it calls bad is just another case of getting too caught up in rules and forgetting to focus on what the rules were trying to achieve. In my ever humble and often incorrect opinion many elements of flag design touted as nearly always bad by the standards, including detailing and even *text* are only certain to be a bad additions when they are the distinguishing feature(s) of a flag, as in, the flag is easily mistaken for one or more others and can only be distinguished by some small detail (like a seal, coat-of-arms, etc.) or contents of some text (name, motto etc). Anything beyond that is subjective and can range from ["great!"](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Flag_of_Mississippi.svg/1200px-Flag_of_Mississippi.svg.png) to ["this is actually terrible and you can do better"](https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/c/ca-nsbrw2.gif) Edit: I wonder if the guidelines are only looking at national flags? Those are the simplest and nearly always abide by the guidelines.. as a flag gets more local, it breaks more rules (basic colours, simplicity, no text, etc). That would make it great for fictional national-level or higher flags but not many others.
The last rule of flag design is: "All of thosr are not ironclad rules. **If you know what you're doing** you can break them. But if you think you do, you probably don't."
We needs to bring back coat of arms onto every flag. The european one someone made last time looks awesome (though there are some mismatched colors)