Principles of Flag Design

Flags are the most important pieces of symbolism to whoever the flag is representing. Thus, it is important to design flags that are meaningful and visually pleasing. There are many, many flags that represent countries, cities, religions and even ideologies. But not all types of flags are created equally.

In general, a flag should follow the Principles of Flag Design:

1. Keep it Simple – the common example is: your design should be so simple a child could draw it from memory.
2. Use Meaningful Symbolism
3. Use Two to Three Basic Colours
4. No Lettering or Seals – related to number 1, lettering and seals alike make an otherwise simple design intricate and complicated.
5. Be Distinctive or Be Related – in other words, your flag should be recognizable and distinguishable from other flags. In addition, some flags (such as the Scandinavian flags) have similar designs for historical or geographical reasons. Even flags that are part of a flag family should be different enough to be distinctive.

Another thing to keep in mind is flags are not always viewed head on. They can be waving, in a resting state or far away. A flag needs to be recognizable in these conditions. A flag can be recognizable while waving or resting simply by having a simple design, but many flags also put a design in the top left corner to help it be more recognizable. A simple trick to use to know if your flag will be recognizable from a distance is to draw a 1 x 1.5 inch rectangle on a piece of paper and then draw your flag in that box. If you have difficulty drawing it, or you have to omit details because the box is too small, your flag is too complicated and may be harder to distinguish from a distance.

There are obviously some exceptions to these principles. For example:

South Africa’s flag has six colours. Despite this, the flag manages to look simple and well designed.

 

The Brazil flag is both complicated and has writing in it. Small writing at that. Despite this, the flag looks visually pleasing.

 

So keeping in mind the principles of flag design, here is an example of a good flag and a bad flag:

The current flag of New Mexico was adopted in 1925. The flag is extremely simple and has only two colours. It also has very effective symbolism, with the symbol being the symbol of the sun to the Zia people, a native tribe from New Mexico, and sharing its colours with the Royal Banner of Aragon.

 

In 1954, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin adopted this flag after a flag design contest. Instead of choosing the best design from the selection, an alderman named Fred Steffen took a bunch of features from other submitted designs and combined them into one flag. This flag breaks almost every flag design rule. It is not simple, the symbolism, while meaningful and thought out, is ruined by the word ‘Milwaukee’ written at the bottom of the flag, it uses 8 colours and, again, it has lettering all over it. To be fair though, it is distinctive.