"Passionate Clevelander" Gregory Kula is petitioning Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to change Cleveland's current flag, a red, white, and blue tribar with the city's coat of arms on the white bar. He writes: Hello everyone, If you have ever seen Cleveland's city flag you are among the few. It has a design from the late 1890s… Continue reading Petition Started To Change Cleveland’s Flag
Every student of the US flag knows that it was officially adopted on 14 June 1777 when the Second Continental Congress passed what is now known as the First Flag Act: Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in… Continue reading Happy National Flag Week
Albany, Oregon wants to join the ranks of cities with flags. Spurred by the vexillonaires of GUAVA (the Greater Unified Albany Vexillological Association), led by West Albany High School math teacher Cole Pouliot, the city is running a design contest through 5 pm Pacific Time on 5 July 2016. The design contest winner will receive a… Continue reading A Flag for the Hub City of Oregon
RealLifeLore is a new YouTube channel presenting a mixture of geopolitics, history, and vexillology. This includes an entertaining and informative series with titles of the form "What Does the ___ Flag Mean?" So far, there are installments for the UK, France, and Spain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBhVJf8n_NM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFt7TOWq0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsxBalxAqzg We hope more installments will be forthcoming. In the mean… Continue reading What Does the ___ Flag Mean?
In Vexilloid Tabloid #57 we reported on a research project by Australian high school senior Max Pickering. Since then, he has interviewed a number of vexillologists; conducted surveys of residents of his home town of Adelaide, South Australia; and revised his research question to the following: To what extent does the design of a flag… Continue reading Pride, Unity, and Flag Design
The province of New Brunswick has a fine heraldic flag, depicting a ship (a three-flagged, single-masted, oared galley called a lymphad, as traditional in Scottish heraldry) beneath a fantastically elongated golden lion passant (a symbol of the Canadian monarchy, and of German Brunswick) . What's wrong with this picture? You might point out that lymphads have never been used in… Continue reading What’s Wrong With This Picture?
We announced a provocative design exercise in Vexilloid Tabloid #57, namely: Ignoring the political near-impossibility of change...simply from a DESIGN perspective, how could the US flag be improved? We reported earlier on two proposals emailed to us, but there have been some other ideas presented since then, on our Facebook page, in the Flags and Vexillology discussion group, and at our meeting… Continue reading More US Flag Improvements
The contest being run by the Bangor Daily News to propose a new flag for Portland, Maine is asking for your feedback on 10 semifinalist designs no later than this Sunday, 15 May. Here are the 10 semifinalists - with the designers' statements and brief notes by Ted Kaye in the captions. The three most highly… Continue reading Rate the Semifinalists for Portland
The annual meetings of NAVA, the North American Vexillological Association, are fantastic events for anyone interested in flags, attracting all flavors of vexillologists -- historians, activists, collectors, vendors, designers, and general enthusiasts -- from the US, Canada, and beyond. 2016 is a milestone year for NAVA, as it celebrates a half-century of these meetings. NAVA 50 takes place… Continue reading Register Now for NAVA 50
As we blogged about last year, many efforts are underway to improve (or to create in the first place) municipal flags. The list just keeps growing, so we have moved it into its own page, Municipal Flag Improvement. We currently have 42 cities or towns on this list of efforts, 41 in the US, one in… Continue reading City Flag Improvements Update
Portland Flag Association 