Buffalo (NY, USA)

Buffalo is the second largest city of New York state, just after NYC. I think Buffalo flag is almost nice, but I think the seal just ruin it:


I think the basic pattern is very interesting, specially for a 1920s flag. The bolts represent the city as "City of Light", due to its early widespread adoption of electric lighting. The seal shows city's harbor — very generic, actually.

After looking a bit for city's symbols, I think I found a winner: buffalo, the animal. Yes, the American bison, not related to African or water buffalos. A bison appears in University at Buffalo's coat of arms as such, for example. Here's the result:


I considered using a brown buffalo, but decided for adopting strictly the original flag scheme. I think the result is amazing, and a much better contender among American best city flags.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I'm very sorry by absence last week.
The buffalo design is based on "Buffalo Embassy Project", by Mike Wozniak.
By the way, do Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo?

Harvard Law School (USA)

Harvard Law School, a college of Harvard University, decided to drop his former coat of arms, because it displayed prominently the family arms of Isaac Royall, the first backers of the college. The issue: Royall was a slaveholder and a slave trader, so the coat of arms was considered "racist".

This is the former coat of arms of the college:


I don't know any replacement proposal, apart from what seems to be a parody and a professor's suggestion to add "Iustitia" ("Justice") below "Veritas" ("Truth"). My proposal is not for total rupture:


I'm defacing Royall's arms with three gouttes de sang ("blood drops"), not forgetting his importance to the school, but denouncing that his wealth was gained in exchange for slave blood.

This way, it gives those black lives the credit for helping build, even though without their will, one of most prestigious law schools in the world.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I'm an outsider here. Do you think it avoid racist connotations of former coat of arms? Or should Royall's arms be dropped completely?

Clinton County (MI, USA)

These days I spotted the flag of Clinton County, Michigan. It's not the most terrible flag, but it's bland — really bland!

This is my rendition of current flag, based on a photo:

The flag contains a spring of mint, representing peppermint and spearmint growing in the county.

I don't know much about the place, but here's my take:

Instead of using a spring of mint, I decided for the shade known as "mint". As a plain mint flag wouldn't do, I put a deer, that scream "MICHIGAN!" and, considering it appears on county seal, is not the worst choice.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Sorry for small delay, I'm trying to avoid it.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (USA)

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a NY-NJ interstate compact that administers a large hub of airports, seaports and other facilities.

They use the following flag:
















This design mixes elements from the flags of New York and New Jersey states. It's indeed a curious flag, but they only make sense if those flags never change.


I decided to use geographical references in the flag: buff color for NJ, orange for NY and blue for water borders, including Hudson River, all them arranged more or less according to the map. As a distinctive element, I've put the Statue of Liberty, located near the center of Authority's jurisdiction area, where, like Emma Lazarus wrote, it serves as a "New Colossus" for the harbor.















A curious sidenote: here, the Statue is in buff field and, although part of New York city, the Liberty Island is an enclave inside New Jersey.

I live the resuly, but I think the white circle has not enough contrast with buff background, so I moved it to the center, also enlarging it:















This adds a different bit of symbolism: that Statue of Liberty is more or less in the center of Authority's area.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
If you're interest in flags with a "colossus", look at my proposal for Rhodes.

Southern USA (USA)

A personal opinion of mine is that flags should be a symbol for unite peopl, not divide them. But it can't perfectly happen if the feelings about a flag occupies a vast range, from pride to shame.

Currently, the most used flag to represent Southern USA pride is a modern reimagination of a Confederate battle flag, never really used as a national flag:
















However, series of happenings is making it become more and more politically incorrect. Another flag that surfaced recently is the so-called "Southern Nationalist Flag", but its racist symbolism has no place in a plural South.
















One initiative to re-think Southern flag was made by 70kft, a design studio from Dallas, TX. One think that I liked about it is the imaginary arrow pointed to the South. But its admittedly "quilt" look is not quite effective.













My idea is using the basic 70kft's idea of multiculturalism, represented by crossing red and blue bends. I'll use the saltire, not only because of its familiarity with previous flags but also because "X" is punning of Dixie, as dix is French for 10.
















I didn't like the result that much, so I applied a "fretty" treatment:
















I liked the final result the most.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I know it's a sensitive issue, but I tried to keep it flag-related. Be civil.

Orlando (FL, USA)

Orlando, Florida is one of main touristic destinations of the world, being known as "Theme Park Capital of the World" for hosting World Disney World Resort, Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld, Gatorland and Wet'n'Wild.

Last week I was travelling there (hence my absence from this blog), but I rarely saw city's flag:


I was wondering if a more emblematic flag would help spreading its usage. Orlando has many iconic postcards, like Cinderella Castle and the Universal Globe, but the flag should countain a neutral symbol that could be flown by any Orlando company without embarassment, so I decided for the fountain of Lake Eola Park, also present in current Orlando flag. It's the result:


I kept the white-blue bicolor for being a distinctive background. The blue ring forms the letter "O", the initial of "Orlando". Giving the due credit, the fountain drawing was based in a logo by Frank Rodriguez (from MUDSHOCK).

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I'm sorry for not posting last week, but I hope that this week's inspiration pays off.

Sioux Falls (SD, USA)

This week, I was reviewing some old, unpublished stuff, and I found this design for a flag for Sioux Falls, the largest city of South Dakota. Last year, there was an unofficial contest for choosing city's flag and I made, but didn't submit, a design.

The winner designer, designed by Max Rabkin, is below. You can find this and the other five finalist here.


The zig-zag like are for the waterfalls, that give the city its name. The pink area represents the buildings made of "Sioux quartzite", a local stone with that characteristic color. The sun represents South Dakota's nickname "Sunshine State".

My flag attempt has similar motifs, but it's way more abstract:


The superior vertical in blue and white represents the falls, while the inferior vertical in pink and white represents the Sioux quartzite.

I'm not sure that my design is best than the winner one, but I still think it would fly nicely in a pole.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
A question: of the six finalists, which was your favorite, and why?

Albuquerque (NM, USA)

One flag-related news that trended this week is the proposal of a new Albuquerque, New Mexico flag by a local graphic designer, Gabe Re.

This is the current Albuquerque flag:


The flag is surely (excessively) based in New Mexico's, but much less effective. The lettering doesn't belong to a flag, and the thunderbird, a local symbol, is possibly more stylized than it should.

So this is Gabe Re's proposal:


You can find official rationale here. In summary, the flag is based in natural landscape, with red stripe representing muddy Rio Grande, yellow for the desert and the bottom-right zig-zag forming the mountains. The zig-zag pattern and the turquoise color (from gem) also relates to native art.

It's not a bad flag, but I don't like the blue touching the red, so I made the following redesign:


I think this design remembers more the Spanish flag, while retaining all the basic symbolism from previous flag. I rescued the thunderbird from previous flag, in turquoise color and less stylized.

The new flag has a better color layout, and I don't think it looks any bad.

Comments are welcome.
More about Gabe Re's design here.

Cupertino (CA, USA)

Cupertino, California is one of the core cities of Silicon Valley, best known as the home town of the headquarters of Apple, Inc (and the "Cuppertino effect", why not?). As such, it has one of best life quality among American small cities.

The flag of Cupertino is, unfortunately, one of those boring cases of logos on a bedsheet. The use of words and dates should be specially avoided in flags.


The logo contains a morion, a kind of helmet here used to (anachronistiscally) represent the Spanish explorers that founded the city. It appears even in earlier version of city's seal.

The city is famous due to Apple, Inc., in turn famous, among other things, to the minimalistic design of its products. And, as a bit of minimalism is always welcome to flag design, here's my take:


This depiction of a morion is present in USA Army heraldry.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Next week, a special post!

Windsor (MA, USA)

Windsor, Massachusetts unveiled its flag last December, 7th. A complete report can be read here.

The chosen design, by a local artist called Susan Edwards, is the following:

It was requested that the design included "elements of the town's topography, natural resources and snow", according to the report. Many aspects of the work are clearly against vexillography principles: use of words, very complex shapes, etc.

Taking Susan Edwards' idea, but with a better layout, I obtained the following result:

My proposal is more stylized, with less colors and simpler shapes. Another positive point is that it discards any letters or numbers, that doesn't go well in the wind. Anyway, it still follows the guidelines given by the report.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

It's always good to remember the principles under a good flag. You can read Ted Kaye's book online on NAVA's website.

United States of America [President]

The president of the United States of America only gained an all-purposes personal flag in 1902; previously, Army and Navy had their own representation of president's flag for a few decades.

The current design is from 1945, with slight changes after Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union:

However, the first proposal for a president's flag dates from 1817! Its author is Samuel Chester Reid, that also helped creating the rule that a star should be added to each new state while the stripes are fixed in 13. In a reproduction by George Preble:

Or, in a poor reconstruction of how it could look today, by me:

That flag was divided in four quarters, maybe inspired by British royal standard: on the first, a blue background with as many white stars as the number of states; on the second, the coat of arms in white field; the third, white, with a representation of Lady Liberty; on fourth, thirteen red and white stripes.

I decided to take inspiration on Reid's proposal to create a less boring presidential flag:

I decided to remove Lady Liberty, because she gets many different depictions e.g. the Statue of Liberty, in New York, and don't fit the rectangle well. The background of the design ins inspired by the current flag, with two quarters with the stars and two with the stripes. In the center of the flag, the coat of arms, like in current one.

I like it. I'm not sure about some hidden stars, though.

Comments are welcome.

Be gentle on comments, please.

Alamo City Rugby FC (TX, USA)

Alamo City Rugby Football Club is a rugby union team based in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Recently, their "heraldic" badge appeared on the Heraldry Hall of Shame Facebook group, devoted to collect notably bad examples of heraldry.

Here's their supposed badge, as appeared on the group:

There are some issues that makes it un-heraldic: dark grey isn't a color traditionally found in heraldry, and there are many contrast issues (for examples, green on blue and blue on grey). So I decided to make a more heraldic version of it.

From the fourth quarter, the Texas flag was rotated and became an inescutcheon (a shield on the center of a bigger shield or part). The vertically-divided shield (said per pale in heraldic jargon) has two interesting features: each part refers to part of the club's name ("Alamo City" and "Rugby"), and their blue-white contrasts intendedly well with inescutcheon's white-red.

The first part is blue (the main color of the team) and contains the Alamo fortress, that gives the club its name, and an ox's skull, commonly featured in the symbol of the team. I like the result of this part because the Alamo, made of limestone, really has a white color, and the white skull on blue appears to be an unofficial logo of the club.

The second part has a vintage leather rugby ball (that I colored red with white details) between the green shamrocks (often represented in heraldry as trefoils), in a motif that alludes to the first quarter of current design.

I like the way that, without adding or removing elements, it's possible to transform a then totally un-heraldic device in a charming and conventional coat of arms.

Comments and suggestions are gladly  welcome.

I'll probably return with flags next weeks. We had two consecutive "etc." posts.

Miami (FL, USA)

For today, one more request by the readers, this time by an anonymous commenter. It's for Miami, that, although don't have a terrible flag for American standards, is easily confused with India national flag by tourists.

This is the current flag of Miami:


Like Indian flag, Miami's one have orange-white-green horizontal stripes with a circular emblem on central stripe, here a seal. The seal contains a palm tree. I couldn't find any source for the meaning of the colors, but I have a theory that it may be related to orange tree: orange for the fruits, white for the blossoms, green for the tree itself.

My first proposal is simply rearranging the key elements, rotating the stripes and enhancing the palm tree, like this:


This flag is very bold, and wouldn't be absolutely strange for Miami residents. It's similar to Ivory Coast flag, but the palm tree may be enough difference.

For a more distinctive flag, I suggest this:


This flag keeps all the colors from current flag. Putting the palm tree on a circle actually makes it remember the city's seal. The orange and circle combination remembers Miami's beautiful sunshine. It can also be related to "Orange Blossom Myth".

Substituting sunshine for sun and enhancing orange symbolism, I came with this:


In my humble opinions, all designs presented are good improvements of current Miami flag. The fact none is a total ruptures makes them easier to be practically adopted.

Comments are welcome.
If you have a suggestion for a future post, too, write me on comments.

McMurdo Station (USA)

McMurdo Station is an American scientific base in Ross Island, Antarctica. The headquarters of Antarctic Vexillological Association is located on the base, so, to celebrate this flag-friendly place, I thought it could be interesting to design a flag to the station.

My base for the design was the American flag, seen on uniforms and, if I'm not wrong, on some poles (no pun intended). Here's my design:


The orangish shade of red is helped by the fact that fluorescent colors are the most visible in the white vastness and, among them, orange is the color that best contrasts with blue. The very dark blue represents winter's eternal night, and the white represents summer's eternal day. The Southern Cross is the a symbol of the Southern Hemisphere and, apparently, it's how it looks on Antarctic.

I like the design, althought it's too generic: could be used by any US base in Antarctic continent!

Comments are suggestions are welcome. Do you know how to make this flag more distinctive?
Is there an astronomer that can confirms if this is the correct display of Southern Cross on South pole?

Philadelphia (PA, USA)

It's the 100th post of this blog! I was thinking in doing a commemorative post, but I read an article about the necessity of a new flag for Philadelphia, so I decided to give a try.

Here's the current flag of Philadelphia, that they're trying to substitute:


The problem of Philadelphia coat of arms is its complexity and being, in some opinions, "dated". I really like flags with ships, but I tried to avoid the comparison with Boston, specially because of color scheme.

After thinking about the substitute for the coat of arms, I decided for the Liberty Bell, supposed to being rung during the reading of US Declaration of Independence. It's also connected to the fact that the city was an early capital of the USA and one of its most notorious citizens: Benjamin Franklin! It's even used by the city's baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

My first thought was the vertical stripes, inspired by the coat of arms:

The bell is too small, so I decided to change the layout. I decided for the horizontal stripes of current flag, that's enough consolidated for being reportedly used without the coat of arms. Here's the result:


I like this flag, for its simplicity and for keeping the base of current flag.

For a similar attempt, look at the link. I appreciate the idea of the stylized keystone on the top of the bell.

Your comments are very welcome.
In occasion of the 100th post, I'd like to thank the readers, subscribers and commenters of this blog. Thank you very much.

US Virgin Islands (USA)

Last week, Samuel McKittick posted on his blog two proposasl to a new flag for the US Virgin Islands.

The current flag of US Virgin Islands:


After presenting arguments to flag change, Sammy presented the following proposals:

Proposal #1 (by Samuel McKittrick)	Proposal #2 (by Samuel McKittrick)

The premise of the proposals by Sammy is very well-thought: before being an American territory, the US Virgin Islands were part of the Danish West Indies. His first design is the Danish flag, with three blue stars on a navy blue background (reference to USA flag) representing the three main islands. His second proposal uses light blue (more similar to the flag of Danish West Indies) and yellow, representing the bananaquit, the national bird of the islands.

The good designs of Sammy gave me an idea to a third design that could be considered. This is it:


Firstly, I changed the star arrangement, to be more similar to the map of the islands and heraldically more traditional. The idea behind this design is to make the Danish flag emulated red and white stripes i.e. the flag of United States, representing the former and the current owners of the islands once.

To a more colorful, we can think on adding bananaquit's yellow:


This design has a much more subtle reference to American flag, what can be a potential fault, but adds local significance and the Caribbean flags' colorfulness.

Your comments are welcome.
Samuel McKittrick's post is very complete and explains more detailed the rationale of his designs. Click here to read it.

Harlem (New York, NY, USA)

These days I was thinking "what flag do the supporters carry to Harlem Globetrotters exhibitions?". Probably, flags (including derivatives) of USA, New York state and city, some fan flags, but not a flag of Harlem. Because Harlem, as far as I know, don't have its own flag.

The Harlem neighborhood is internationally famous for its importance in African-American cultural scenario, including the "Harlem Renaissance" in the 1920s and 1930s. I would seek a flag that represent the importance of Harlem for African-Americans and the importance of African-Americans for Harlem but that wasn't as potentially divisive as, for example, the Hammons flag that fly on the neighborhood.

After some thought, I came with this flag:

The blue and orange stripes come from the flag of New York, and represent the fact that Harlem was originally founded by Dutch as Nieuw Haarlem. The black color represent the importance of the neighborhood for the African-American cultural scenario, but also the hard moments, like the 1964 Harlem Riot and the Great Depression. The stars come from the flag of Haarlem, the Dutch city from where the neighborhood gained its name, but also the religiosity of its inhabitants and the hope that the good old days will return.

Your comments are welcome!
If you have any suggestion about how a Harlem flag should  look like, I'm glad to listen.

Ayer (MA, USA)

The city of Ayer, in Massachusetts, USA, is holding a competition to design its new flag. The submissions should be sent by letters, so I probably won't do an entry. However, I'll do this post to spread the contest.

The city of Ayer doesn't have a flag, currently, but it's known a design used in the 125th anniversary of the town:

There isn't much thing to be took on a possible design. It's a simple seal-on-bedsheet design, and there's nothing much special on the seal, only a depiction of the town's library.

The city is named in honor to James Cook Ayer, famous patent medicine businessman (he patented the sarsaparilla), that donated the money to build the city hall (although not living in Ayer). I found a coat of arms attributed to him, and the banner of arms would be a good design:

My earlier design, that I still prefer, focus more on the history of the town:

The charge on the center of the flag is the mill that represents the foundation of the community that would originate the city. Green stands to the early agricole activity and to the Fort Devens, fort used by US Army (that uses green uniforms) to train soldiers to WW1 and WW2, and many more, closed in 1994. Black stands for the role of the railroads on the development of the town and to the current industries of the city.

What design do you prefer?

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
If you want to submit yourself any of my designs I presented there, contact me via comment box.

Provo (UT, USA)

Provo, Utah is one of most dynamic city of USA, and is well-quoted in many national rankings. However, its flag is between the worst of the country [see a ranking].

So, city mayor wrote a post on his blog asking for suggestions to a new flags. Looking at comments, I noticed that Provo inhabitants like very city's logo:

It isn't a good idea to put the logo integrally on the flag because letters should be avoided. Logos usually aren't a good idea neither, but we hope this logo won't change anytime soon. My suggestion:

Yes, the sun is duplicated, but I think this design potentialize all the good things of Provo.

Your comment is welcome!

You can post your own proposal on mayor's blog. Why don't you try?