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

[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.