How States Are Threading the Needle on Flag Design

For greater than a century, Utah’s flag has paid homage to the state’s founding settlers: the sego lilies they subsisted on when meals was scarce, a beehive symbolizing their communal spirit.

From a distance, although, it appears rather a lot like a number of different state flags that additionally function a seal on a blue background.

So, Utah launched into a redesign. But it discovered that altering a state flag to make it stand out from the group isn’t a easy course of.

Brad Holdaway and SuAnn Taylor went to a steakhouse carrying a folding desk, a do-it-yourself signal and hopes of stopping Utah from changing its outdated state flag with a brand new banner that the Republican-controlled Legislature had simply accredited.

“They’re trying to cancel our heritage,” Mr. Holdaway stated because the couple tried, with notable success, to persuade folks ready for brunch to signal a petition calling for a statewide flag vote.

For years, some Utahns had talked about altering their flag to one thing extra distinct, one thing that extra folks may really fly outdoors their home or put on on a T-shirt. Finally, after a marathon of fee conferences and payments and a newspaper contest, lawmakers settled this 12 months on a alternative.

Plenty of individuals preferred the brand new flag, which had bipartisan legislative assist and was signed into legislation in March by Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican. But at a second when a number of states throughout the nation are weighing new flag designs — together with Illinois, Maine, Michigan and Minnesota — the livid backlash that ensued in Utah reveals simply how politically dangerous such a change will be.

Flags, even ones that aren’t triumphs of graphic design, develop into enmeshed in a state’s self-image, and altering them introduces tough questions of identification and place at a time of deep polarization.

Before Mr. Cox even signed the brand new flag into legislation, opponents had been amassing signatures to put the problem on the poll. When that effort failed, they introduced plans to attempt once more. Mr. Cox, who stated he had a longstanding curiosity in flags and hoped the brand new banner could be a unifying pressure, stated he was caught off guard by the depth of the backlash.

“I actually think the controversy has far less to do with the flag and far more to do with this moment that we find ourselves, in a country where there is so much animosity and division,” the governor stated in an interview. He added: “There are just a lot of people that are worried that things are changing too rapidly in our country.”

Ted Kaye, a vexillologist — somebody who research flags — on the North American Vexillological Association, or NAVA, made an analogous statement. People, he stated, “love the idea of continuity, of this flag has been part of our history, and I don’t want to change our history.”

Five Guiding Principles of Flag Design

To begin with, “You can’t please everybody,” Mr. Kaye stated.

So is it price it to try a redesign? Elizabeth Goodspeed, a graphic designer and design critic, thinks so. The flag, she stated, is “like a physical, visual manifestation of a state’s values in the same way that a logo in a brand system represents what a company cares about.” From that perspective, she defined, “rebranding is a very powerful tool.”

Although choice will be subjective, there are methods to create a stronger design. Mr. Kaye wrote the NAVA information on what makes a “good” flag, with 5 primary ideas:

Alaska’s flag is an instance of fine design, in accordance with the information, as a result of it makes use of one image, the star, which each represents the state and pertains to nationwide imagery.

The guidelines will be efficiently bent and even damaged. Text on a flag, for instance, is tough to learn from the space at which flags are often seen and can seem backwards on the reverse aspect of the flag, in accordance with Mr. Kaye’s information. Colorado’s flag bends this rule with its “C” as a result of the letter works as a daring graphic ingredient.

California’s flag, which says “California Republic,” totally breaks the rule. But it carries historic that means and has lengthy been iconic.

Ms. Goodspeed pointed to her personal state of Rhode Island’s flag, which says “Hope,” as one other exception. “Text can be very graphic and text can be designed to be very visible,” she stated.

The tips are primarily based on a flag’s major perform, which is to be flown. It must be recognizable from a distance as a way to be efficient.

These flags have additionally been broadly embraced by the residents of their respective states, which, in accordance with Laura Scofield, a graphic designer and vexillologist, is the true measure of an excellent flag. A design is successful, she stated, when folks applicable it or modify it to their ends.

People who really feel a robust connection to those flags not solely fly them outdoors their houses or companies, but additionally put on them as clothes and even have them tattooed on their our bodies. In this manner, the consultants stated, folks can ship a sign of belonging, each to these inside the group and people outdoors it.

With a flag, Mr. Kaye emphasised, an individual can say: “I’m proud of my tribe. This is my tribe.”

Where the Winds of Change Are Blowing

When the Nebraska flag, a notably verbose and hard-to-discern banner, flew upside-down outdoors the State Capitol a number of years in the past, no person seen for days.

The episode reinvigorated an on-again, off-again dialog about adopting a extra distinct Nebraska banner. A lawmaker launched a invoice and solicited design concepts, however the measure fizzled, extra out of disinterest than partisan fervor.

Nebraska is one in every of a number of states with a protracted custom of speaking about altering the flag with out ever doing it. Others have made beauty modifications to their flags in latest a long time, tweaking a colour or including a small element.

The nation finds itself now on the cusp of a brand new vexillological frontier, with a number of metropolis and state governments weighing new designs. Beyond Utah, a minimum of 4 different states thought-about laws this 12 months that might result in overhauls.

In Maine, one other member of the seal-on-a-blue-background membership, one invoice known as for reverting to a extra distinctive design first adopted greater than a century in the past. That flag, which some residents fly already, encompasses a lone pine tree and a blue star on a yellow area.

In Michigan, a lawmaker advised a panel to think about new flag designs. And in Illinois and Minnesota, legislators handed payments creating commissions to weigh new, extra distinct banners.

Though the Michigan and Illinois flags are, in accordance with critics, merely uninteresting, the Minnesota flag has been criticized for together with depictions of Native Americans that some see as racist.

State Senator Doris Turner, the Democrat who sponsored the flag invoice in Illinois, stated she was launched to her state’s flag, which options a big eagle and the state identify on a white background, in elementary college. But she didn’t assume a lot of it over time. She stated she hoped to search out one thing that might develop into extra entwined with the state’s identification.

“If you look at the Texas flag, no matter where you see that flag, if it’s flying, if it’s on a mug, if it’s on a postcard, you know the Lone Star State,” she stated. But with Illinois, she stated, “you wouldn’t know it was the Illinois flag other than the fact that ‘Illinois’ is emboldened at the bottom of it.”

A High Standard in Utah

In Utah, the brand new, extra colourful flag is about to develop into the official banner of the state subsequent 12 months. But it has already been hoisted atop some flagpoles, an indication for supporters that the years of labor and political discomfort had been definitely worth the wrestle.

“This flag really leans into our history and anybody who doesn’t see that just simply refuses,” stated Chance Hammock, a resident and vocal supporter of the brand new banner, which he stated celebrated Utah’s distinctive geography and historical past whereas sustaining a “gorgeous” design.

Aesthetics apart, if one purpose of the brand new Utah flag was to unify the state, it has not but succeeded. Particularly for some on the political proper, the brand new banner has develop into a logo of an unwelcome and far broader push to vary issues that don’t want altering.

“They’re watering down the history, they’re watering down the significance, so they could slap it on a hat and slap it on a T-shirt and make a couple bucks,” stated Chad Saunders, an organizer of the opposition to the brand new flag. “That has nothing to do with pride.”