Paraíba (Brazil)

A commenter called Bruno Rodolfo asked about designs for a new Paraíba state flag.

When I had a series for new Brazilian flags, I argued that Paraíba hasn't one of the best flag designs, but I'd keep it for its important link to history. However, this link to history is being strongly desconstructed last years.

This is current Paraíba flag:

It was adopted in 1930 to mourn the murder of João Pessoa, then-governor of Paraíba and running candidate for vice-president of Brazil. For similar reasons, the state capital was also renamed "João Pessoa".

Many argue against the flag currently, because: it represents only negative feelings; the murder had more passional than political reasons; his death was catalyst for a coup d'etat that gave birth to dictatorship.

Some of those favor new designs, but it seems that most of them favor the previous state flag:

The design is certainly lighter. The shield is pointless, especially the text, but it seems to have inspired state coat of arms. My first design was mere simplification of current flag, emphasizing Republican symbolism:

My next design used the colonial arms of Paraíba, often found in the heraldry of the state, on a fancy-shaped shield:

The second design is symmetrical, simple, apolitical and has all the colors of national flag. The coat of arms supposedly contains six sugar breads, representing the historical importance of sugarcane in state economy.

Bonus: a tongue-in-cheek design I once design, just to prove a point. Hint: the text in current flag reads "I DENY" in Portuguese, even though current ortography is identical to a N-word. It wasn't made for serious purposes, but still better than current design.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

I'd link to thank Bruno Rodolfo for his precious suggestion.

House of Orléans-Braganza

The house of Orléans-Braganza are descendant of princess Isabel, heiress to last Brazilian emperor, and her husband, count of Eu. They are current claimants to the Brazilian (extinct) throne.

The current coat of arms of Orléans-Braganza is that of former Empire of Brazil, with inescutcheon of house of Orléans:


On a previous post, Rodrigo Sales asked me for a remake of this coat of arms. It's the kind of creative exercise I've never done, but nonetheless I'll present two suggestions. I've used "french modern shield", because that's the escutcheon shape historically used by Brazilian nobility.

My first attempt:


It's, basically, a simplification of current coat of arms. I've removed the stars that, apart from being too busy, should be updated every time a new province was created. This design uses the room much better, and diminished the contrast-problematic clash of green and red.

It's better to design a family coat of arms with some usages in mind, like impalement, quartering and lozenge (for ladies).

Impaled	Marshalled	Lozenge

My second attempt is my favorite:


In Brazilian imperial flag, the green represents House of Braganza (emperor Peter I of Brazil), while yellow represents House of Habsburg-Lorraine (empress consort Maria Leopoldina), so it can work as genealogical arms. The inescutcheon of Orléans adds the blue and white, similar to current flag and a homage to Our Lady, patroness of Brazil.

Other usages of coat of arms:

Impaled	Marshalled	Lozenge

That inspired to make this dinastic flag:


Comments are welcome.
This post was a request. Feel free to do your request, too.

Pernambuco (Brazil) [Independent]

Pernambuco is the 7th most populous and the 10th richest state of Brazi. I've been requested to design a set of flags for a hypothetical independent Pernambuco state. But today I'm only showing my solution for national land flag.

This is the current flag of Pernambuco:

















It's based in a flag used during a colonial rebellion:
















In the original flag, the three stars represent three capitanias (similar to a province) that adhered to rebellion: Pernambuco, Paraíba and Ceará. In current flag, the star represents statehood. The rest of symbolism is very obvious: white for peace, blue for sky, sun for energy and brightness, cross for faith, rainbow for plurality.

As I think the reference to statehood is not suitable for an independent country, I designed a new flag, but with links to the historical flag:

















I kept the rest of the symbols. Now without the star, I had to rebalance the flag, so I used the rainbow as a partition line, what would give room for both sun and cross and, as a side effect, fix green-blue contrast issue.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
This flag was made under request. It's not intended as a political statement.

DROPS: São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil) [II]

São Paulo is the biggest city of South America. Less importantly, it's the place where I was born and lived since then. The screen of the computer I'm using right now has color issues, so I had to rely on something whose colors I was used; then, I chose re-redesign São Paulo's flag, as I already posted about it here.

This is the current flag of São Paulo:


It's not the most horrible flag in the world, I have to admit, but it's surely a complex design, what's not a good thing when we talk about flags.

The two proposals I made then:




So I was thinking: What if I simplified it, but not as much as my first proposal? Here's the result:


The very same flag, but with a tiny red border around the inner circle:


I made the coat of arms fit in the circle, even though I'm not sure if the shoulder is anatomically correct now. I specially like the proportion of red and white in the flag as a whole.

Even though I think this design appealing, I'm not sure if it's such a big improvement over current flag. But it was funny doing it, and seeing the final result, anyway.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
If I'm correct, it's blog's 200th post! Thanks for helping it keep alive for such a long time.

Flags of Pernambuco towns: Part I

A Brazilian friend requested flags for cities of Pernambuco state. I've once re-created the flag of its capital, Recife (post here; a candidate for a re-fix, by the way). Today I present the flag of his home city, Nazaré da Mata, and Carpina.

This is the current flag of Nazaré da Mata:

















I've thought about keeping the green and white triband, but my final design, after some pencil-on-sketchbook, removed it, but has still some similarity with current flag.

















The elements of the flag refer to tourist attractions: the golden obelisk; the sugarcane, referring to historical sugar mills and plantations; the standard, used in a local dance called maracatu.

This is the current flag of Carpina:















The first quarter of coat of arms represent the fact that the city had two former names. The second and third quarters represent the bravery and the Christian faith of founding fathers, respectively; the fourth quarters is punning with city's name, related to carpentry.

My first flag proposal contains an abstract saw:

















My second proposal adds the second quarter of coat of arms as a flag canton, but just because one of two city's former name was Floresta dos Leões ("Lions' Forest") .

















My third proposal is less orthodox, adding green color due to "forest" part of former name.


















With some luck, we'll have a part two and many more!

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Keep an eye in this series: I promise some great designs.

Fernando de Noronha (Brazil) [II]

To read the original post, click here.

Almost three years ago, I proposed the following flags for the heavenly archipelago of Fernando de Noronha:




For sure, it removed most of the nonsense in current flag (look original post for rationale):


However, I now tend to believe that I could have a more effective proposal. Previous ones had too many colors, and the landscape wasn't effective and, possibly, as relevant as I used to think. My new proposal is the following:


My new design kept the link to current flag as well as Brazilian flag, but is much simpler. I decided to focus on the dolphins, major symbols of the archipelago. The arrangement in circle is classic and catching, and better remarks Brazilian flag.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
As I'm still without computer, I thought a re-fix is what I could offer.

Misiones Orientales (Brazil)

Misiones Orientales (from Spanish, "Eastern Missions") or Sete Povos das Missões (from Portuguese, "Seven People from Missions") refer to an area in current Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul that changed hands many times between Portuguese and Spanish empires, often exchanged by Colónia del Sacramento. De facto, though, it was almost-independently ruled by the Society of Jesus until the religious order was expelled from Portuguese Empire, in the 1750s.

As the Portuguese name makes clear, it was constituted by seven different Jesuit "reductions", one of them, São Miguel Arcanjo (St. Michael Archangel), is a World Heritage Site joined by similar sites in Argentina. So I used the number seven in my flag:


This type of cross is, in Brazil, related to the Missões; it seems to be based in the Caravaca cross. The red colors represents the stone bricks used in the historical buildings and the blood shed in Guaraní War. This flag could be used in related museums, archeological sites, etc.

Now, just a side note... During the for-post research, I found a similar flag, but proposed not only by Brazilian reductions, but also neighbor reductions in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, a supposed "Missionary Nation". In my reconstruction:


Comments are welcome.
This blog only has reached 50,000 views! Ooo-hoo!

South Region (Brazil)

The Southern Brazil is remarkable for having the biggest (but still not relevant) separatist movement in Brazil. Those separatists claim supposed cultural, geographic and demographic particularities.

The flag most associated with Southern Brazil is that of separatist movement "O Sul é Meu País":

Three stars for the three states that compose the region: Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. This flag is a bit boring, and rejected by other separatist movements.

A more recent flag is the following:

I disagree that the araucária (Araucaria angustifolia) is, inside Brazil, a symbol exclusive to the South Region, as there are many counter-examples. I consider a more stylized tree a better solution, too.

Curiously, my proposal ended looking a bit like above:

I designed it on a way that it be used inside or outside a secessionist context. The blue represents the Atlantic Ocean that bathes the three states. Green stands for the wealth of the forests and camps (for the secessionists, hope for freedom?). The stars are three in reference to the three states, and red due to the history of fights of its people.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I tried to make this post the most apolitical I could... I tried.

Brazil [III]

Click to see parts I and II.

Once more, I'm inclined to fix the Brazilian national flag. In this case, my idea is more subtle and doesn't fix all issues I described in parts I and II, it's more like a hotfix.

This is the current Brazilian flag:


My idea, inspired by Paraná flag, is just substitute this confuse set of stars for the Southern Cross:


Apart from being a more effective way of showing a national symbol, it's a much simpler and remarkable design. A side effect is that the white ribbon is less horizontal, a bonus for those that see a reference to the armillary sphere.

It keeps the criticized "Ordem e Progresso" [Order and Progress] writing, considered both unaesthetic and partisan (being originally derived from a Positivist motto). One step further:


Comments are welcome.
Don't forget to check parts I and II of the series.

Trindade and Martim Vaz (Brazil)

Trindade and Martim Vaz is a Brazilian archipelago inhabitated by military only, administratively belonging to the capital of Espírito Santo, Vitória.

I've recently found this proposal by dear Brazilian vexillologist André Pires Godinho:


The red triangle refers to name of the main island (Trindade = Trinity), and the background represents the sea. The coat of arms, (don't know if intentionally) very similar to other coats of arms of Espírito Santo, represents: in fist quarter, a representation of the flag of Principality of Trindade, a failed attempt to establish a micronation in the Trindade island during the 1890s; in second quarter, the position of Martim Vaz and neighbor islands (known as "north island" and "south island"); in bottom. a view of Trindade.

An interesting variation was proposed by Bo Bernvill (the bigger star is Trindade's relative position):


Both proposals have their own merits. For fun, I decided to design my own proposal, that can be seen below:


The triangles on hoist now emulates the coloring of Principality of Trinidad's flag. On a blue background, standing for the sea, a map of the islands.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I desire all readers that an amazing 2015!

Mercosur [car plates]

The Mercosur, a regional bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, intends to adopt uniform vehicle registration plates, like European Union already did. Trucks and buses must adopt it from 2016, other vehicles from 2018. On recent news, it's possible to see prototypes for the model, that can be seen here. I think the model rather ugly, so I decided for my own attempt.

The plates on the linked image follow the color scheme of respective countries. I'll, at first, design an unified color scheme, totally inspired in Mercosur's flag. They contain the blocs's flag (in Portuguese for Brazil, otherwise in Spanish), the national flags, the countries names in native language and the local identification (already used in Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela).


I particularly like the layout, and I think it's more similar to the current plates on the countries. I don't think a QR code is needed.

As I early wrote, the basic layout can be adapted to current colors and customs. Below, for example, there are vehicle plates inspired in current Brazilian ones.


I'm particularly happy with the results, because I achieved a clever color scheme with contrasting colors (fundamental to every type of plates).

Comments are welcome.
You can see my post about Mercosur flag here.

Brazilian Capital Cities: Epilogue

On the first day of 2013, I officially started series of post about the state capitals of Brazil. That day, I commented, in details, the problems I saw on all those flags. If you haven't read it, click here.

That blog was illustrated with the following image, a set with the current flag of all state capitals of the country:


As none of the cities changed its flag, the image is still updated.

Changing all the flags I felt wasn't adequate, we obtained it:


Some of the flags I proposed were mere fixes, others were completely original. But, more than one year and a half later, I notice I learned a lot about flags design (vexillography) and the final result, in the end, were bold and clever flags.

It's a good time to thank all readers for taking part of these (in my opinion) successful series. In your opinion, dear reader, what was the best post of these series? I'm really interested in reading you.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
Thank you very much, again. Your views, comments and sharing is fundamental to the blog!

Campo Grande (Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil)

A very special post: the last of my series about Brazilian state capitals flags. Today, we'll look at Campo Grande, the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul.

The current flag of Campo Grande is the following:


The eagle of the coat of arms holds a winding horn, symbol of the local agricuulture. The two wavy stripes represent the Segredo and Prosa streams, and the silver bordure with red crosses represents the bandeirantes that settled in the region. It's not a bad flag, but it represents more the region than the city itself.

A curious fact about finishing these series with Campo Grande is that, actually, it was one of the earliest capitals for which I designed a flag prototype, that you can see below. It was inspired by the statues of jabiru, the majestic bird of Pantanal, present in local airport.


It has a fault shared with current flag: it represents the region better than the city. So I decided for a new attempt, taking cities landscape as an inspiration. The result:


From the coat of arms, the two streams that represent the foundation of the city. The bottom red stripe represents the red or purple soil of the place, that gives it the "olive-skinned city" nickname, and the links it still keeps with native people. The top blue stripe represents the horizon, very clear as the city is located in the top of a plateau.

This flag is very unexpected, in my opinion, but I like it.

Comments are welcome.
And here is the last flag from my state capital series. Soon, the epilogue of the series. Wait!