I shot out of my seat when I saw him using the historical flag lol. Subtle but powerful

Once I saw Estonia, I rolled my eyes. This is one of those nonsense accounts, but I still am curious how many of these are official. Source: https://x.com/i/status/2039707093486473426

This is the flag of the United States shown briefly on a new cryptic video posted by the White House on X, seems weird.

For me it would be the flag of Amsterdam which, quite frankly is a bit far from a dictatorship or a dystopia in my ranking.

The colors on the Lithuanian flags follows a pattern that so many other African nations use. It is a color-way that a ton of pan-African nations use. I was wondering if there was a purpose to that, or just a coincidence.

I think that the Holy Roman Empire has the best shot.

Here is how I did it:

1) I looked at the colours of the flags (not the symbols, only the "backgrounds")

🟥Red: 142

⬜White: 106

🟦Blue: 100

🇧🇷Green: 83

🟨Yellow: 66

👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏿Black: 37

🍊Orange: 9

2) Number of colours (just background)

🇨🇳1 colour: 22

🇦🇹2 colours: 60

🇫🇷3 colours: 94

🇵🇸4 colours: 21

🇨🇫5 colours: 7

🇿🇦6 colours: 1

So the majority has 3 colours.

Those colours will be Red, White and Blue.

3) Organisation of the flag

🇵🇸 Horizontal: 95

🇻🇦 Vertical: 31

🇨🇳 Uniform: 25

🇵🇸 Left triangle: 17

🇵🇼 Round: 14

🇨🇬 Diagonal: 13

🇯🇲 Cross: 12

🇱🇷 Many strips of two colours: 9

🇬🇩 Other:17

Horizontal highly wins.

Note: 1 flag can be in various categories, that explains why uniform flags are more numerous than 1 coloured flags.

4) Order of the stripes.

I looked at the order of apparition of red, blue and white colours on tricoloured flags (verticals and horizontals).

🟥Red:

22 times 1st place

5 times 2nd

31 times 3rd

Most of the time, when red appears in a tricoloured flag, it is in 3rd position.

🟦Blue:

17 times 1st

7 times 2nd

12 times 3rd

Blue tends to be 1st

⬜White:

6 times 1st

34 times 2nd

2 times 3rd

White tends to be 2nd

Perfect!

So the order is blue, white, red.

Now let's look at the symbols.

5) Occurrences of symbols:

⭐Stars: 67

🚫None: 65

🧥Coats of arms: 31

🌙Moons: 15

🐬 Animal: 11

🇬🇧 An other flag: 10

🔪others: 17

Surprise! More "stars" than "none"! The flag will be stellar

So let's dive into the stars:

6) Position of the Stars:

Left: 31 (Including the majority (18) on top left)

Center: 22

Other: 13

The star will be top left

7) Number and shapes

The relative but clear majority of the stellar flags has 1 star.

The clear majority of stars has 5 branches.

8) Colours of the star.

27 flags have white stars 🐻‍❄️

14 yellow ✨

11 red ♥️

7 other 🇸🇹

The star will be white

So, the final flag has three stripes, horizontal, with blue at the top, white at the centre and red at the bottom, and a white star at the top left.

I've noticed that here in Serbia the army will go through essentially the entire history of the flag from the first uprising to now

Meaning

They're carrying flags associated with both the Kingdom of Serbia and Socialist Yugoslavia

I thought this was pretty neat as here fans of either of those 2 often don't really like the other, so I wanted to share

And I wonder

Do other countries do this type of thing too?

By that I mean the group as a whole, they look mostly really great, the worst ones for me are Extremadura and Castile and Leon. It bothers me a little that there are three other flags very similar to Catalonia but as a whole the flags are great. Much better than countries like Argentina in which they all look so similar or US states, with just a few being actual great designs and the rest is bad.

I've been silently browsing this sub for years and I don't understand why the internet (twitter for example) consistently has this view of r/vexillology when it just doesn't make sense nor align with the reality of the sub? All of the flags listed above, maybe with the exception of Virginia for being a seal flag, are highly praised not only on this sub but throughout the wider vexillology community.

At first I thought this stems from the whole NAVA guideline thing and people linking that organisation to us, but even that doesn't hold up. Per the 2001 NAVA state flag survey, the aforementioned flags are ranked (out of 72 states and territories):

Maryland - 4
Hawaii - 11
California - 13

Anyway, I've seen this opinion pop up a lot on the internet recently and find it kind of funny how this sub is now the default scapegoat for bad flag design. What do you think? Where did this (imo undeserved) reputation come from?

My uncle's neighbor flew this flag outside his house just beneath an American flag, in a housing complex in West Virginia. I know the flag is associated with Black Beard the pirate. But does it have a contemporary political or other social association? Did it identify the neighbor as a member of a group? (I also gather the whole flag pole was gone after a day or two, so presumably the HOA was all over it.) Thanks in advance

It's just for fun

Credit to u/comfortable_team_696.

Does it have relevance today?

Ukraine & Estonia

Why does the UK flag seem to be much bigger than the other flags in this picture of the WEF in Davos?

What truly sets this flag apart from most other flags is its dynamic design. Each time a new state joins the Union, a star is added.

At first, this wasn’t just about the stars. When the 14th and 15th states joined the union, the flag didn’t only gain two new stars, but also two new stripes.

But after this, someone must have realized that constantly adding stripes was a bad idea, only leading to a cluttered design, because the number of stripes was later fixed to 13 (the number representing the orginal colonies-turned-states).

The number of stars, however, remained open-ended. And here we are today with 50 stars arranged in a staggered grid pattern.

Now, the sheer number of stars have had unintended consequences. The U.S. Olympic team, for example, had to reduce the number of stars in its logo to just 13 because 50 tiny stars would simply have been too small to manufacture for the woven patch on their uniforms.

That’s just one example. But it raises an important question: what happens when the U.S. gains more states?

Adding a 51st or 52nd star is already proving to be a challenge for designers. Even with just one more star, attempts to create a balanced design have been awkward. And if the number of states ever reaches an ever larger number, something like 60, the flag would become quite visually overwhelming.

You might say reaching 60 states is unrealistic, but don’t be so sure. Right now, both Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. are serious contenders for statehood. And throughout U.S. history, there have been countless movements pushing for regions to break off and form their own states. Even recently, in 2016, there was a proposal to split California into six states!

It may not be discussed much, but I think the ever-growing star count could discourage statehood discussions... It sounds absurd, but the flag’s layout might actually influence political decisions, and that seems like a bad reason to avoid adding states when needed.

So, what’s the solution? Some might say we should call it done at 50 stars and never change it again. But as I’ve pointed out, even 50 stars already present some issues.

What I propose is to permanently reduce the number of stars to a lower, more manageable number. Something like 32.

Why 32? Well, that number still conveys “many states” without overwhelming the design, and importantly allows for the staggered grid pattern we are used to.

Also, if you look at the history of U.S. flag variations, you’ll notice something... As the number of stars increases, it becomes harder to tell when a new one has been added. Can you easily spot the difference between a flag with 45 stars and one with 50? Not really. But once the count drops below 32, the change becomes noticeable.

TLDR:

The U.S. flag was designed to add a star with each new state, but adding more stars is making the design crowded and impractical. With 50 stars already causing issues, the idea is to cap and reduce the stars to a fixed, lower number (e.g., 32) that still represents “many states,” and preserves the familiar grid.

What do you think? Would a fixed number of stars be a smart design move? Or is the ever-changing star count an essential part of the U.S. flag’s identity?