A vexing question

[muckefuck]

I was complimented at yesterday's barbecue on the neatness of my bratwurst. The clean design of my pale sausage edged with a line of mustard and a line of relish prompted someone to ask, "Is that the flag of Jamaica?" I knew it wasn't, but when it came to the question of whether some lame country had come so late to the party that a crappy design of green-white-yellow horizontal stripes was the best choice available[*], I was stumped. "Is there a vexillologist in the house?" I asked. But, alas, there was not. Fortunately, I have found a passable substitute in the form of this website. The various search engines leave much to be desired, but the use of one reveals no matches. There are a couple of tricolours with these three colours, but they have the green in the middle--which, I have to admit, more closely follows the rules of heraldry (i.e. metal may not lie upon metal) than that which was on my bun.

[*] Far from the worst choice possible, sadly, as some of the examples here attest.

Comments

On flags

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

As much as I laugh and agree with some of the sentiment on that page (dear God is THAT the flag for the Mariana Islands?!?!) -- am I the only one that doesn't think that writing on a flag is all THAT bad? There are far worse things to don a flag with. And besides, at least Brazil or Saudi Arabia are easily recognizable, as opposed to the plethora of tri-bar flags that lack any real differentiation other than colour order.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I more or less agree with Josh's basic premise: This is a flag, people! The design should be as iconic and uncluttered as possible. We're looking for simplicity and boldness here, not a lot of frou-frou nonsense-- which is what the writing on flags tends to be.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes -- it's like trying to come up with design rules for HTML -- there are very few asbolutely not's, but everything else is, "Can you pull this off without making this look cluttered and ugly?"

I don't think the text on the Brazilian flag, for example, all that bad. But there are others that push that way too far(::koffElSalvadorkoff::) and it makes for a poor weak design for an icon.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Aw damn it -- that was me. I hate LJ's non-signed-in default to "anonymous"!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's been bugging me a lot lately, too. What's with dumping the warning, brad SixApart?

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

While I more or less agree with his basic premise, I agree with aadroma about it being like HTML - does it work - I think Brazil's flag actually does (it's recognizable at a distance, the colors work from a heraldic standpoint & it's not really all that busy despite Josh's statements). Some of his ratings just don't make sense - look at Puerto Rico & Cuba - is there any reason for the difference in scores? And Mauritania - what's wrong with gold on green? And Madagascar gets "Original" while Bulgaria gets "Bad Colours" for the same colors. And Bhutan's flag looks pretty cool.

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

And I started far too many sentances with And.

What I Learned Today from Your Journal

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I know almost nothing about the geography of the South Pacific. (You know, aside from the fact that it's mostly water.)

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Heraldry sounds about as silly as feng shui.

*ducks*

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I usually describe feng shui to people as one third common sense (e.g. put your door on the sunny side, not facing the north wind), one third aesthetics (e.g. round doorways is nicer than square ones), and one third superstition (e.g. all the numerological bits). For "heraldry", replace "superstition" with "tradition".

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

I'm vexed by the neatness of your bratwurst. I expect big slurpy drippy things stewed in beer with a light grilling and sheathed in a roll not just to absorb stray juices, but also to guide the meat missile and mustard into the waiting mouth.

On the other hand, I never would have found out about Niue, a country hitherto unknown to me. I checked it's website and they don't permit same-sex marriage.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

So that puts the kibosh on your plan of emigrating and opening an ItaliAsian bakery in Niue City, does it?

Niue came to my attention in the early days of the Web when it was willing to hawk its .nu domain names to the highest bidder. (If you ever change your mind, rocco.nu is still available!)

I regret my bratwurst vexing. Be assured that in your presence, I'd do my best to dress it so as to appeal to your penchant for slurpy, drippy, sheathed, juicy meat missiles.

[zompist.livejournal.com]

I find that I disagree with the flag guy at least half the time. (This goes for his A's as well.) Of his failures, for instance, I rather like Bhutan (cute dragon), Marshall Is. (airline logo-- well, I'd fly it), Sri Lanka (unusually adroit lion), Belarus (kicky side carpet), Iran (optical-illusion lettering/fringe!), and Brazil.

Some of the most interesting flags are those of Japanese prefectures. It's fascinating what can be done if you blow off the rules of Western heraldry.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, someone could have a FIELD DAY snarking all over those! The first one I clicked on was Aomori and my initial reaction was So that's what you get when you have a video game designer do your logo. Then I tried to figure out why it was that that mean giant axe wanted to attack those nice, peace-loving, extinct volcanos.