this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Vexillology
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I think you could broaden your horizons by watching this great comment by a historian on the "design rules" of flags. Most of these rules you are quoting from a CGP grey video are from one book by a guy named Ted Kaye who also made most of them up. There are no sources to any "vexillology experts" contrary to what he claims about in his marketing.
I'm not even starting about the history and value in terms of representation behind those coat of arms. They are some of the only links between the modern federal states and the actual historic states that occupied that territory for much of the middle ages apart from some state names.
I got about twenty minutes into this before giving up, and it seemed... well it seemed a lot like he had started with the position that he liked those flags and worked backwards from there. It's fine if he likes them, obviously, but the justifications were very flimsy. Like when he grumbles about the "flags should be simple" guideline having no reasoning or explanation literally immediately after showing a slide with the reasoning for it
In practice, it's not reasonable for a flag's identification to depend entirely on it being the only one with two little horses in the middle. If it's an actual physical flag on a pole and not a printed graphic, we very often cannot make those horses out
The escutcheons on the German state flags could still be incorporated in a design that isn't just the German flag with said escutcheon on it. Look at the flag of Zeeland just across the border in the Netherlands, for example - 16th century escutcheon in the middle, but entirely recognisable even if you can't see the middle at all. It even draws the field from that escutcheon
The NAVA booklet doesn’t present itself as rules for evaluating flags, it's guidelines for designing new flags. They are the advice of Kaye and his fellow vexillologists, and they're perfectly clear about being advice that is okay to not follow
I do think it's pretty sensible to criticise a flag for not being easily identifiable as that specific flag. That's the primary purpose of a flag. Failing at that is not ideal
I just think that the primary job of a flag is to be identifiable while flapping in the wind at the top of a flag pole, ie being a flag. If you can't instantly tell what the flag is while it's being a flag it's failed it's task.
I have no issue with coats of arms in general, but they're not designed to do the job of a flag, they work when painted on buildings or on letter heads or any other static decoration.