Ask Lemmy

Australia’s official flag is ho-hum, but you already have an incredible flag you could use instead

I think that the Australian and New Zealand ones are okay from a technical standpoint.

We have a lot of really bad state flags in the US. A lot of them originally involved slapping the state seal (not optimized for flag use, usually more-detailed) on usually some shade of blue.

That being said, a bunch of them have been revised. Utah ("The Beehive State") did a 2024 revision, which I think is a pretty strong improvement (and follows the "originally just the state-seal-on-blue" pattern):

to

And honestly, I think that most of those warrant a change more than most national flags.

However, if I were going to make changes to national flags...hmm. Well, there are a whole bunch of countries that have extremely similar flags. Nobody wants to back down on their flag, but honestly, the present state of affairs just kind of sucks from a functional standpoint, seeing as the purpose of flags is to let one easily identify something as being associated with a country. It'd be nice if they'd flip a coin or something and have one of the countries pick something more-distinctive.

One of the most-egregious is the flag of Chad:

And the flag of Romania:

There are a bunch more that look very similar at a distance or at small sizes or if one is being flown upside-down. I won't list them all here, but it'd be awesome if those would get sorted out.

Also, while the tricolor, as with the above flags, is associated with republicanism, and thus a lot of countries use it, and technically, it's nice (simple, easy to identify, no text), there are similar alternatives that would help make flags a lot more distinguishable. Take the flag of Czechia, for example:

Still three colors, but looks pretty different from most other national flags. You don't get into the "tricolor with very similar colors" problem.

A lot of African countries- green red yellow and a star maybe? Just not a lot of variety and no real character.

Tricolors for others are fine but I wonder what else they could do, ie. Netherlands, etc etc.

Somalia, easily.

Union Jack countries could differentiate more.

Lot of south American countries are similar too.. Maybe a bit more variety there as well.

All of the flags that are just stripes. It's too easy to get them mixed up with similar-looking striped flags, especially if there are others with the same colors. Obviously people from that country will know which flag they're looking at, but people from other countries can easily get confused. It kind of detracts from the power of the flag if other people don't know what it represents or have to search it up every time they see it.

Flags should be immediately distinctive and memorable, IMO. Like, I love how Canada's flag has a Maple leaf. No one else has a maple leaf, so people can remember that one.

I’d take out the 13 stripes from the US flag and just use the naval jack.

In general I think any flag that is using seals, crests, or text should probably have a redesign, not necessarily to remove the icons, but to simplify them. (US state flags are the worst offenders here.)

Belize has a flag that looks like it could be the flag of a midwestern state.

The flag of Cyprus is just an outline of the island which, I feel, relies too much on cartography for its symbol. What if you’d never seen a map?

I’d like to see Ireland use the green field with harp flag. I get the symbolism of the tricolor but it’d be nice to move past the Catholics vs Protestants and leave religion out of it. Maybe, if re-unification happens.

Nepal. I'm all for non-rectangular flags, but couldn't they have chosen a different aspect ratio than

Lazer Kiwi or nothing!

The Union Jack itself only represents 3 of the 4 countries in the UK. And since the missing one, Wales, has a dragon on their flag, it seems like an easy fix that will make the country as a whole cooler

It’s not a national flag but the Washington State flag is horrid.

Ugly as hell, looks even worse at a distance, can’t be read from a distance, terrible shade of green, tells you nothing about our gorgeous state other than why it’s called Washington like that wasn’t obvious. It’s so hard to see at a distance it took me like 20 years of living here to realize it was a portrait, I always just thought it was ugly and never bothered to actually look at it. One of the worst flags in the country for one of the best states.

It is always a little strange for me to see the flag of Mozambique. I don't really know anything about the country, but the flag with its AK47 in there has the vibe of a terrorist organization.

As someone that was born in Australia but doesn't love identifying as one I think Harold Thomas got it absolutely bang on! The Australian Indigenous flag should be the National Australian flag. Black night sky, big yellow sun, and iron rich red dirt. The current Australian flag fkn sucks.

I'm Australian and our flag is awesome, if I had to change it i would replace the union jack with the aboriginal flag and put new Zealand down by the side of the southern Cross

great post

Let's make a tierlist sbout how urgent it is for them to change:

S:

• Poland's flag is supposedly derived from a white bird against a setting sun. To me it would make sense to include that imagery on the flag, or a historical coat of arms.
• I think places like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq need to agree on a different colour scheme for themselves. At the moment they're confusingly similar
• Russia's current flsg i bslieve it's literslly just copying the french and netherlands colours because Peter the Great was so inspired by them.

The old fashioned, imperial russian flag was beautiful:

But even better is with a crest:

Which can be simplified for a stylish modern design (as i bekieve all credts should be when possible)

Alternatively, a bear could look good on their flag:

A:

• Israel (changing flag after a hopeful regime change would be prudent because it's like a symbol of genocide now.)

B:

• Luxembourg (too similar to Netherlands),
• China (i find china's flag really dull even if it is iconic. They surely want to invoke their historical longevity rather than just Communism. Stars represent the key chinese regions, which seems like a good feature - the red does not.)

F:

• I don't think i'd change it, but Canada seems as/more close to britain than Australia so it makes more sense to give a little Union Jack in the top left corner.

For New Zealand, I like Hundertwasser's Koru Flag

murican flag should be the pedobear

There's a lot of flags that annoy me and I would like to see changed, but I think these are the ones that I would change without a second thought:

Russia

Iran

Iraq

China

Current: I will forever hold the opinion that communist flags are hideous. China is an ancient civilization that has a rich history and culture, and you're telling that they can't find anything to symbolize their nation outside of a foreign influenced communist flag? Bullshit.

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Belarus

Can I say I'd change them all by getting rid of the concept altogether?

Nz flag is good I wouldnt change it for any of the shit alternatives.

I'd change the Swiss flag because its square and I want it to be rectangular.

I would change the Australian flag as it infringes on our flag. I'd change it to the ugly green and yellow combo they love with kangaroo on it.

Tricolour flags are to plain and confusing so I'd ban tri colour flags. If you have a tri colour flag you got to put a symbol on it at least.

Chamge the US flag to something nonsensicle, just to fuck with them, since their flags are everywhere.

Also, there should be more (mythical) creatures on flags. Imagine the german flag with a wolpertinger!