Bangkok (Thailand)

Bangkok is the capital and most populous city of Thailand.

It's flag looks more or less like that:


The flag shows city's seal, consisting of Hindu god Indra riding Erawan (or Airavata), his three-headed white elephant, above the clouds. The seal itself is based in a drawing by Siamese prince Naris (1863-1947).

The seal itself looks good. However, something as complicate as that has no place in a flag. Indra himself is usually depicted in very complex ways, so I decided just for Erawan, on a green background.


Erawan is more often associated with Laos, but it's also very significant on Thai monarchy symbolism, being even present in royal coat of arms from 1873 to 1910.

I'm not sure if it's too synthetic, but I think it's very elegant.

Comments and suggestions are always very welcome.
I'm not expert in Hindu mythology. If I made some mistake, please correct me in comments area.

Bethlehem (Palestine)

Bethlehem is a very ancient city located in West Bank. It's known to be place where Jesus Christ was born, as well as David was born and crowned king of Israel, reportedly. Another popular site is Rachel's tomb. As such, Bethlehem is one of most import pilgrimage places in Middle East.

As far as I know, Bethlehem doesn't flag a flag. My first thought was designing a flag including the silver star, inside the Church of the Nativity, that marks the exact place where Jesus is believed to have been born. However, I haven't figured out a way of making a compelling, but still self-evident, flag.

So I looked at city's logo:


I noticed Christmas Star was the perfect element for the flag. The logo also contains a wheat ear, as Bethlehem's comes from Hebrew and Aramaic for "house of bread".

That was my first attempt at completing a flag for Bethlehem:

Star of Bethlehem in night sky, border yellow like wheat... all very simple, but very attractive. I think adding the border was a good idea to make it less boring.

But it wasn't still as good as I wished. So I transformed the border in an orle:

I guess the second proposal is much more effective.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Sorry for recurring delays. I've acquired a new computer, so I'll try to post more often.

Nepal

Nepal is the only non-rectangular surviving national flag. Its oddity gathers legions of fans; I'm not one of them. It's an expensive, non-aerodynamic (what makes it inevitably short-lived) flag, and reproducing it in accordance to construction sheet can be a formidable challenge. Proposals of amendment seems to have happened very recently.

This is Nepalese current flag:


My initial sketch for a Nepalese flag is more than two years older. This is it:


I think that, since all elements are relevant (including the triangles, that, in popular lore, represent the many and notable mountains of the country), I should keep them. I've used the symmetry of flag elements in my favor, arranging the triangles to form a rectangle.

I didn't like the result, because the flag lacked contrast. So I decided to give another try in last days. My first new result was the following:


This flag is, from a vexillological point of view, much more effective. For a minor detail, I've added a border outside the crescent moon.

But it didn't shouted "Nepal!", so I inverted the blue and white diagonals.


This flag may not be as contrasting as the previous, but I think it's more truer to Nepalese history and more similar to current flag.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I want to know: Do you like current Nepalese flag?

Qatar

On the post about twin flags, an anonymous commenter on the possibility of redesigning other very similar national flags. It was cited, among others, the Bahrain-Qatar case.

I like the Bahrain flag the most:


The colors, the ratio, the simplicity of the serrated edges... it all looks fresh. But I think the flag of Qatar is the ugly duckling of the family:


I like the diamonds of the 1930s-1949 flag of Qatar:


But I dislike the words (it's country's name in Arab, a really dumb idea). I kept the maroon color, as the region was once famous for its purple dyes. I changed the ratio for more conventional 1:2, too.


Just for curiosity: the nine "teeth" represents the fact that Qatar was the ninth emirate to be "reconciled" with United Kingdom, after the seven United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

I think the result is striking and more original, but still true to Qatari history.

Your suggestions and comments are welcome, too.
Last week there wasn't a post due to technical issues. I'm so sorry!

British Overseas Territories (United Kingdom)

Let's take a careful look at Gibraltar's flag:

Why is this different from any other British overseas' flag? Because it don't have an Union Jack on it. Now, look at the flag of the other fifteen British overseas territories:

Akrotiri and Dhekelia	Anguilla	Ascension
Bermuda	British Antarctic Territory	British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands	Cayman Islands	Falklands Islands
Montserrat	Pitcairn	Saint Helena
South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands	Tristan da Cunha	Turks and Caicos

Quite boring, isn't it? So today I'll present my proposal for the fifteen! Some of the designs are mine, others aren't (when noted).

My design for Akroitiri and Dhekelia is inspired by the Dhekelia Garrison's flag. For difference, I've added the colors of British Ministry of Defence, to show it's a military base.


My proposal for Anguilla is actually a rip-off of Republic of Anguilla (1967-1969) flag i.e. a banner of current arms.


For Ascension, a banner of arms, too. I added a tiny white fimbriation in the green chevron, just to increase visibility:


For Bermuda, I picked the lion and red of current flag (both representing British influence) but put the lion's face on a triangle, a reference to famous Bermuda's triangle.


My British Antarctic Territory flag proposal is based on coat of arms, too. I put the blue stripes on center and made the white background shine.


For British Indian Ocean Territory, I picked the flag of Chagossians (natives) in exile and put the palm tree and crown from current design. Some minor details is that I put the crown crossing the tree and centered in black stripe, for better aesthetics. This is one of my favorite flags in the series.


Also original is my flag for the British Virgin Islands. The lamp refers to Saint Ursula and the 11,00 martyred handmaidens that give the islands its name. The four stars represent the four main islands: Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke.


My proposal for Cayman Islands is a simplification of current coat of arms; this design, actually, was reportedly once used by independentist movement.


My flag for Falkland Island is freely inspired in the coat of arms. I removed the ship and shifted the flag for the hoist for aesthetic reasons.


The flag of Montserrat represent, basically, the island of Ireland (due to physical similarities and the origin of many settlers) and the cross. So I made the following design:


Another of my favorite design on the series is that of Pitcairn. It's, basically, a rotated and simplified version of the coat of arms.


For Saint Helena, I kept the symbol bird of the territory, but added a cross in red and yellow in reference to Byzantine empress Saint Helena, that, according to tradition, found the True Cross.


I rotated and simplified the coat of arms of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Now, the two wavy stars represent both James Cook and the two island chains (South Georgia and South Sandwich) that gives the territory its name.


The flag of Tristan da Cunha is just the striking banner of arms:


Finally, my proposal for Turks and Caicos. I couldn't satisfactorily harmonize the three charges of its coat of arms, so I used yellow for sand, green for the flora, pink for the shell and the flamingoes and a lobster as lone charge.


Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Sorry for the delay; I hope the long post is enough sorry.

Yöruk people

Yöruk is a nomadic Turkic people originally living in Anatolia and Taurus Mountains, but also present in Iran and the Balkans. In Turkish, their name mean "walkers".

Internet is a really big place, and I found a Yöruk-descendant talking about the inexistence of a flag for thr people. So I decided to make my own suggestions.

My first proposal:


The crescent and star on blue background remarks the flag of Turkic Council. The flag itself is structured to remark a landscape, with the camel representing travelling and endurance, characteristics of the nomadic people.

One local said me that, although Wikipedia tells that camels are their traditional means of transportation, most Yöruk families don't have their camels.

So, among the listed animals, I chose the horse, that, in this context, may be the better substitution:


I don't know much about Yöruk, but I like the looks of the flag.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Sorry for delay, I'm having a busy week!

Mumbai (Maharashtra, India)

Mumbai, also known as Bombay, is the most populous city of India, and one of ten most populous cities in the world. It doesn't seem to have a flag — at least, I haven't found any.

So here's my proposal:


The seven stars represent the seven islands that constitute Mumbai. The building is the Gateway of India, the biggest tourist attraction of the city and representing its nickname "gateway of India"; it also appears in current coat of arms. The orange background was chosen due to its location in Maharashtra state, related to former Maratha Empire.

Comments are welcome.
Flags competitions are ont the way. I'll post my submissions here, too!

Hong Kong

An anonymous commenter recently asked about my view on a hypothetic flag for an independent Hong Kong.

Firstly, let's face the flag issue... This is the current flag of Hong Kong:

In my opinion, it's a very good flag. But the red background and the five stars are clearly taken from People's Republic of China national flag. Before 1997, when Hong Kong was still a British colony, it used the following flag:

A number of photographs show a flag used by pro-autonomy or pro-independence protesters consisting of the British-age coat of arms, in blue background, with "Hong Kong" witten in Chinese ("香港"):


A former proposed flag of same movement is the following:


The fact that some groups are now avoiding directly British symbolism (the Union Jack) is a point I took to design my proposal below, admittedly inspired by Qing flag:


The blue background represents the British past and the port of Hong Kong. The dragon (and the red details) shows the Chinese culture of the region, and its golden color stands for the financial importance of Hong Kong for the world; notice it appears in the last three flags I showed. The white disk, apart from the rising sun, represents the nickname of "pearl of the Orient" given by the British and present in the coat of arms they attributed to there.

It's, obviously, only one of many paradigms one could take to create such flag.

Comments are welcome.
Notice I tried to be the most politically-neutral I could.