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The world of vexillology has seen two important debates in recent years. The first debate concerns the proper scope of vexillology, in particular whether it should be defined essentially as the “scientific” or “scholarly” study of flags. The second debate concerns the usefulness or desirability of efforts such as Ted Kaye’s criteria for “good flags” and “bad flags” as the primary guides to proper flag design. This paper considers and connects both questions. It argues that most vexillological work is not “scholarly” in the sense that term has come to be understood, but that this is just fine. Nevertheless, to the extent that vexillology does aspire to be a serious scholarly enterprise, the most promising scholarly model for that enterprise is not history or sociology (though a good deal of important historical and sociological work about flags has been done and remains to be done), but aesthetic criticism—art, architecture, literature, music, and the like. But if that’s true, then we need to welcome a rich set of aesthetic, critical, conversations. And that conversation must go way beyond the limits of a single pamphlet.
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Over 300 American cities and towns are known to have adopted new or redesigned flags to represent their communities between 2015 and 2022. In late 2022, NAVA conducted an online survey asking respondents to rate those flags’ designs on a 0–10 scale. The 2,852 respondents (308 NAVA members and 2,544 public participants) selfreported from 90 countries (71% from the U.S.); their ages distributed widely. Afterwards, NAVA blanketed the country—especially the cities with flags in the survey—with press releases yielding wide media coverage. With average ratings converted to a letter grade, over 30% of the flags got an A or a B, but over 60% of the flags got a D or an F. Analysis of the results not only showed a range of design quality, but also provided insights into how perception of the designs varied across respondent ages, locations, and NAVA membership.
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Flag designers often need to decide how to convey the idea of facing or moving “forward”. An effective solution depends on the representational traditions and the psychology of flag perception. These are surprisingly complex matters, however, as people may bring multiple ways of projecting the idea of “forward” onto a flag, ways which can reinforce or contradict one another. This paper lays out five different ways people may impose a sense of horizontal directionality to a flag.
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- Journal Article (3)
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- flag design
- American city flags (1)
- analyzing flags (1)
- blowing flags (1)
- design preferences (1)
- Directional Paradigms (1)
- directionality (1)
- Element-based directionality (1)
- element shapes (1)
- flag analysis (1)
- flag design criteria (1)
- flag perception (1)
- flag scholarship (1)
- flag surveys (1)
- fluttering flags (1)
- flying flags (1)
- forward motion on flags (1)
- forward movement on flags (1)
- Good Flag, Bad Flag (1)
- heraldic conventions (1)
- Heraldry-based directionality (1)
- Hoist-based directionality (1)
- hoist-based directionality (1)
- movement of flags in the wind (1)
- municipal flags (1)
- New Brunswick flag (1)
- reading conventions (1)
- Text-based directionality (1)
- vexillography (1)
- vexillological debates (1)
- vexillology (1)
- Wind-based directionality (1)
- wind direction (1)