I have a small passion for flags. Here are some I made over the years, more or less from most to least recent. I initially made them using GeoGebra, but that wasn't very optimal, so I switched to tikz (a LaTeX library) and then to writing svg code. I have recreated some of them in svg, and they are included in this page too.
There's also a cool project I had for a period in 2019 called QTOAF (which stands for "Quick, Think Of A Flag"), in which I had to design a new flag every day. That project didn't last long unfortunately. The flags I designed are available here. You can see the flags from this project I like the most in this page too.
Every month, r/vexillology runs a contest where each participant can submit up to two flag. The November 2020 contest was the first one I participated in. To enter that contest, you had to:
Both of my submissions were from the first challenge: I redesigned the flags of Argentina and Greece.
Since all of the submissions must have a name, my redesign of the Argentinian flag was named "Sol y plata", which means "Sun and silver". This flag features a silver river, symbolizing the Río de la plata, and the Sol de mayo, one of Argentina's national symbols (which I took from the current flag and recolored). Aside from silver, the colors I used are from the Spanish flag, to acknowledge Argentina's colonial past. The disc around the Sol de mayo is not purely aesthetic: it resembles the first Argentine coin.
My redesign of the Greek flag was named "The Olive Flag". The colors I used are olive, since there are plenty of olives in Greece, and yellow, for the sunny days of the Mediterranean climate. The pattern in the olive bands is inspired by a fairly common pattern used during the geometric period of Greek pottery (which is, at least in my opinion, the easiest style of Greek pottery to implement into a flag). The shield is taken from the current Standard of the President of Greece: I just tweaked some proportions and obviously recolored it.
"Sol y plata" placed 21st in the contest with 29 votes and it was voted as the best submission for Argentina. "The Olive Flag" got 15 votes and I was quite surprised that it did worse than "Sol y plata". I guess they voted for the flag with the best symbolism and not for the one that I think looks best.
As a bonus, here are two scrapped designs for Argentina and Greece respectively. The first one featured green to represent nature and silver for the Río de la plata and was scrapped for being too bland. The second one features a cross, the same pattern I included in the flag that I submitted, two tridents representing Greece's maritime history and the colors from the Greek pottery. It was scrapped because it was too complicated and I couldn't get the colors right.
At some point in October 2020, I decided to try and make a flag with a shield. I figured it would be best to make a flag for something in Europe, and I eventually settled on Mount Resegone, which is an iconic mountain in Lombardy with many peaks.
I decided to put a skield over a cross. The cross and the colors for the shield's border are from Lecco's coat of arms. Inside the shield, I drew a mountain with many peaks over a lake, symbolizing Mount Resegone over Lake Como.
I was never happy with how many colors I used for this one, especially after I learned how strict the heraldic rule of tincture is. But I think I might try designing a flag with a shield again sometime in the future.
After designing the flags for Spokane, I got into experimenting with patterns on flags, and I decided to try some animal patterns. Here are the results:
P.S. I got the zebra/tiger pattern I used with a free license that requires me to add this link: Animal Print Vectors by Vecteezy.
In September 2020 I designed some flags for the city of Spokane, Washington, USA. They were in the process of changing their flag, and so they were accepting submissions. Their old flag was this one, and the one that got chosen as the new flag was this one.
Here are the flags I submitted, from my favorite to my least favorite. Most of them feature a variation of a cool pattern I found on the homepage of spokanetribe.com. The colors I used, other than the ones in the pattern and the yellow from the old flag, are lilac and huckleberries blue to represent the local flora, and sky blue because it was amongst the colors suggested by the flag commission. Some flag feature Sun symbols, because "Spokane" might mean "children of the Sun", as written in the old flag. The blue lines, when present, represent the Spokane river.
In August 2020 I designed a flag for a friend of mine. It features a 'C', the first letter of her name, the Japanese character ク, which is the first character of her name when written in Katakana, and an eye with makeup, because she's really into makeup. The color scheme was initially temporary, but she really liked it, so fuchsia and black it is I guess.
In July 2020 I designed a symbol for lust. Later on, I decided to implement it into a flag. I used the color yellow because it's the color of betrayal and I personally associate it with lust. The demon is heart-shaped and has a few curves, which makes it seem attractive, but it has horns and a demon's face. I might design some more of these in the future.
In April 2020 I designed a flag for a friend of mine. I used the color purple, I don't know if it's still her favorite color, but it is the color I think of when I think of her. The pink box with a black heart is related to a gift she gave me for Christmas in 2017.
So, there's this subreddit that's all about posting flags you saw while dreaming. Here are two interesting ones that I saw. The first one was related to Persia, the second one to a Pokémon trainer.
P.S. the second one is a png file, not an svg file. I've incredibly lost the source code for it, but I will recreate it. Eventually.
I wrote about what QTOAF was at the top of this page. Here are the flags from that project I like the most:
In March 2019, the city of Duluth, Minnesota, USA was in the process of changing its flag, which looked like this. I submitted three designs to them, which are not the greatest flags I've ever made, but eh. They ended up choosing this one as their new flag.
The first two designs of mine are based off of the Aerial Bridge. The color combination are as follows: red and white for the Lake Superior Agate, which is a rock commonly found in the Duluth area, and blue for the lake for the first one; colors from the old flag for the second one. The third design is based off of the Lake Superior Agate, and it kinda looks like a 'D' for Duluth.
In March 2019, the city of Manhattan, Kansas, USA was in the process of adopting a flag. I submitted a design to them. It was the first time I ever submitted a flag in a contest. They ended up choosing this one as their new flag. My design featured the colors from the city logo. Also, it featured a hill, representing the landscape, and a bike, because I read on their website they had a bicycle-friendly community. Also, the bike is shaped like an 'M' for Manhattan. Here it is:
In early March 2019, I designed a flag for a young couple. I won't go into the symbolism, but here it is:
One of the first flags I designed is a flag for one of my brothers. It features his favorite colors, blue and green, and a golden triforce, since he is a fan of the Zelda series.
My passion for flags pretty much started in August 2018. It was in that month that I designed my first flag. It features a red bar, that represents me since red is my favorite color, and a purple bar, which represents a friend of mine that is quite important to me. It also features a white background, symbolizing the fact that I'm young and I can write my own future. There's also a modified Ying Yang symbol that I've actually been using since late 2015. It symbolizes my belief that in the end good will be stronger than evil. Here it is:
It definitely has a few flaws, being the first flag that I designed: the red and purple colors are kinda dyed out because I didn't want to have an aggressive color combination. Of course they would not contrast well if they were straight up #ff0000 and #9400d3, but I could have definitely designed the flag with the white separating them. Also I could have made the border of the symbol a bit thicker, so that it would be easier to see from a distance.
Here's a bonus variant of it. I can't remember exactly when I designed it, but probably it was still 2018. I was seeing on YouTube plenty of naval ensigns and naval jacks, so I decided to make a naval variant of my own flag (that was very much inspired by the naval ensign of Belgium).
