This Week In Vexillology #199: A Modest Proposal

So, Nebraska (right next door) is toying with the idea of giving it's flag a makeover, to which I say, 'hooray, what a good idea!'  This is what they've currently got going on:


Generally speaking, it's rated as one of the worst designed state flags out there and it's not hard to see why. While the blue and gold are a good combination, color-wise this is 'Seal On A Bedsheet' at it's finest. There's way too much text. Way too much going on in the seal. You have to squint or get a magnifying glass just to see it all. I think our neighbors can do better- and it turns out the Omaha World-Herald thinks so too...  they asked a bunch of elementary school kids for their best flag proposals, but I wanted to roll up my sleeves and take a crack at it as well.  Keep in mind that I'm not artistic at all- though I can draw a straight line pretty good- and was working with a pretty simple doodle program on the computer- so it's not faaaaawncy.  But here's what I've got:

Take One: In which I attempt to draw the state flower of Nebraska and fail. Hardcore.



Okay, I realize that apart from New Mexico, yellow is not a color featured quite so prominently on a lot of state flags- so this flag would stand out, that's for sure. But the yellow stands for the Great Plains and the blue stripe running diagonal across the flag represents the River Platte which runs through state. The gold disc in the upper canton represents the sun over the Great Plains and that green and yellow mess inside there that bears a passing resemblance to a flower is supposed to be a goldenrod, the state flower of Nebraska. So yeah. That's Take One.

Take Two: In which we get abstract, baby:

Same basic principle applies here. We're inverting the color scheme currently used in the flag- yellow stands for the Great Plains, blue for the River Platte, but we're switching things up a bit here. The circle in the lower canton near the fly is meant to represent an 'O' for Omaha, while the symbol in the Upper Canton is supposed to be a rough outline of Scotsbluff- the actual bluff, not the town- two symbol represent the two places at the opposite ends of Nebraska: Omaha to Scottsbluff.

I'm going to keep my ear to the ground and see if they get serious about this and open it up to public submissions (I'm really hoping they do.) If they do, I might actually get serious about this and put together something to submit. The only downside with these two takes is that there's a lot of yellow Maybe too much yellow. But this was fun.


Comments and criticism welcome!

In the meantime, keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise! Next week, we hit the big #200, so get ready for that!

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